nji> 


A 

A 

0 
0 

1 

c 

3D 

2 

8 

-D. 

0 

- 

CD 

8 
6 
7 

JO 

=  -n 

JTY 

The    Common  School  Question. 
A  Discussion  Pet¥;een  Rev.    '.\?m. 
Glee son  end  Frank  M.    Pixley. 


I 


UNIVERSITY  OFCALIFORi-IEA 
AT   LOS  ANGELES 


ROBERT  ERNEST  COWAN 


THE  COMMON  SCHOOL  QUESTION. 


A  DISCUSSION 


REV.  WM.  GLEESOxN 


(OF  EAST  OAKLAND) 


FRANK  iM.  PIXLEY 


EDITOR  OF  THE  ARGONAUT. 


SAN  FKANCISCO  : 

P.  J.  Thomas,  Prikter,  505  Clay  Street, 
1883. 


6C3 
CO 


3- 


63^\ 


PREFACE. 


The  publication  of  this  pamphlet  would  seem  to  be  neces- 
sitated by  the  importance  of  the  mattei*  involved,  and  be- 
cause it  is  possible,  and  even  more  than  likely,  that  many 
persons  who  take  a  deep  interest  in  the  subject  of  education 
may  not  have  read  all  the  material  which  is  now  offered 
ihem  for  the  first  time. 

«J^  A  brief  historv  of  the  causes  which  led  the  Eev.  Father 
"^     Gleeson  into  the  contest  with  the  infidel  editor  of  the  Argon- 

r^     uut  may  be  summarized  as  follows: 

f^  Mr.  Pixley,  in  his  open  letter,  challenged  Father  Gleeson 

_i     t'j  a  discussion  of  the  subject  of  the  necessity  of  combining 


columns  of  the  Argonaut  as  a  tilting-ground  for  the  tourna- 


^     X'eligious  with  secular  education,  and  offered  the  use  of  the 


raent.  Father  Gleeson  accepted  the  challenge,  and  merely 
^  bargained  for  the  privilege  of  a  rejoinder, — the  closing  of  the 
5  defense,  as  it  might  be  called, — after  Mr.  Pixley  had  replied 
£2    to  his  arguments. 

a=  Instead,  however,  of  attempting  to  answer  the  masterly, 
^  cogent  and  superb  reasoning  and  pleadings  of  his  reverend 
"  antagonist,  Mr.  Pixley,  in  the  character  of  an  Ingersollian 
Don  Quixote,  evaded  every  issue  which  he  should  have  met, 
and  ran  full  tilt  against  the  windmills,  which  his  own  per- 
verse imagination  had  construed  into  giants,  by  launching 
into  a  tirade  of  abuse  against  the  Catholic  Church,  of  the 
doctrines  and  eternal  loveliness  of  which  he  is  as  ignorant 
as  is  a  Comanche  Indian  of  the  science  of  Trigonometry. 

Mr.  Pixley  having  refused  to  publish  Father  Glees  3n's  re- 
joinder in  the  forthcoming  issue  of  his  journal,  it  appeared, 
through  the  courtesy  of  Col.  J .  P.  Jackson,  in  the  columns 
of  the  Evening  Post. 

In  order  to  further  show  Mr.  Pixley' s  inconsistency,  we 
append  to  this  correspondence  the  full  text  of  an  editorial 
published  in  the  Argonaut,  June  — ,   1881. 

293494 


AN  OPEN  LETTER. 


San  Francisco,  February  lOtli,  1883. 
Reverend  Father  Gleeson,  St.  Anthony's  Church,  Oakland — 
J)ear  Sir:     The  Argonaut  would  not  willingly  misrepresent  the 
Attitude  taken  by  the  Roman  Catholic  Church  in  California  in 
xefereace  to  our  public  schools.     It  can  understand  that  there 
may  be  reasons  deemed  satisfactory  to  the  Church  why  in  Rome, 
or  in  Catholic  countries,  it  should  be  desirable  to  have  Catholic 
43ltildren  attend  parochial  schools  only.     The  reasons  why  they 
should  not  attend  our  non-secular   and  free  public  schools,  in 
which  Catholic  gentlemen  and  ladies  are  employed  as  teachers, 
jnanaged  by  an  elective  Board  of  School  Directoi's,  of  whom  a 
part,  and  not  unfrequently  a  majority,  are  Romanists,  and  under 
superintendents,  as   in    San   Francisco   and   Oakland,  who  are 
quite   friendly  to   the   voting   population   connected  with   your 
■church  organization,  is  not  so  apparent.     I  will  not  repeat  the 
arguments   which   I   have  so  often  made  use  of  in  the  Argon- 
aid.     You  are  familiar  with  them.     My  object  in  writing   you 
this  open  note  is  to  obtain  from  you  that  part  of  your  sermon 
delivered  at  Oakland,  on  the  fourth  of  February,  at  the  dedica- 
iion  of  Saint  Patrick's  Church,  which  touched  upon  our  public 
-school  system.     This  sermon  of  yours,  or  so  much  of  it  as  treats 
upon  this  question,  I  will  accept  as  the  orthodox  views  of  the 
Roman  Catholic  Church  for  this  State,  as  it  was  delivered  in  the 
presence  of  his  grace  Archbishop  Alemany,  and  has,  therefore, 
the  sanction  of  his  approval,  which  is  the  highest  ecclesiastical 
authority  upon  this  side  of  our  continent.     I  ask  you  to  send 
jne  this  portion  of  your  sermon  that  I  may  print  it  in  the  Argon- 
aut.    In  the  report  of  your  sermon  you  are  accredited  with  hav- 
ing quoted  from  the  Council  of  Baltimore,  which  declared  that 
the  faith  and  morals  of  Catholic  children  were  jeopardized  by 
attending  public  schools.     You  are  also  accredited  with  a  quota- 
tion from  the  late  Pope  Pius  IX.,  on  the  pernicious  influence  of 
the  public  school;  also  a  quotation  from  Bishoj)  England,  show- 
ing that,  out  of  live  millions  of  Catholic  children  in  America, 
three  millions  seven  hundred  and  fifty  thousand  are  lost  to  the 
faith  by  reason  of  public  schools.     You  are  accredited  with  say- 
ing that  there  is  no  virtue  in  public  schools.     After  having  asked 
the   question,  you   are    said   to    have  answered  it  in  this  wise: 
"  There  is  none,  for  no  religion  or  morals  are  taught  there."     I 
shall  be  glad  to  print  in  full  the  text,  by  you  quoted,  from  the 
Baltimore  Council,  the  Pope,  and  Bishop  England,  and  your 
comments  thereon,  as  having  the  sanction  of  Archbishop  Ale- 
many.     I  very  fraukl}''  declare  to  you  the  purpose  for  which  I 
desire  this  portion  of  your  sermon.     It  is,  that  I  may  make  its 


aclinisHioiis  tlio  text  for  future  writiiif,'H  ftiul  fir^^'uincnts,  in  wliich, 
of  course,  I  slmll  uiulertuke  to  prove  thnttlio  (Jlnircli  is  wrong  in 
being  the  enoin}'  of  the  present  non-Hecturinu  Kchool  system.  I 
have  been  constantly  assailed  by  most  excellent  people — good 
Romanists — who  declare  that  I  misrepresent  the  Church;  that 
the  Church  is  not  the  enemy  but  the  frifMul  of  our  school  system. 
With  yoiar  admission,  I  shall  be  spared  going  over  this  ground. 
When  once  it  is  admitted  that  the  Roman  Church  in  America  in 
the  uncompromising  enemy  of  the  public  schools,  that  there  i» 
room  for  but  one  of  them  upon  this  continent,  that  only  one  can 
survive,  and  that  the  suppression  and  annihilation  f)f  the  Ameri- 
can free  school  system  /.s  llw,  political  ohjrd  and  spii-ilnnl  policy  of 
the  Roman  Church,  then  the  Argonaut  may  be  permitted  to  take 
its  side  of  the  controversy  without  its  premises  being  challenged. 
Classic  story  is  full  of  fabled  incidents  where  one  of  the  con- 
tending parties  is  wrapped  in  clouds,  or  made  invisible  by  some 
friendly  divinity.  That  always  seemed  to  me  to  be  but  doubtful 
valor  that  fought  behind  an  impenetrable  disguise,  or  from 
■within  an  invulnerable  armor.  I  have  no  respect  for  the  valor 
of  any  part  of  Achilles  biit  his  heel;  so  in  contending  with  your 
most  venerable  Church,  I  shall  be  glad  if  I  can  find  by  your 
admissions  some  common  siarfing-point  for  the  discus.iion  of  this 
school  quetfiion.  Your  Pope,  your  cardinals  and  councils,  your 
archbishops  and  bishops,  your  common  preachers,  and  many  of 
your  journalists,  openly  admit  your  undisguised  hostility  to  our 
free  schools.  You  declare  them  godless,  ruinous  to  the  morals 
of  your  j'outh,  destructive  to  the  virtue  of  our  children,  leading 
to  immorality,  vicious  practices  and  crime.  You  declare  the 
superiority  of  your  parochial  schools,  and  claim  that  the  result 
of  a  church  education  by  priests  and  nuns  is  better  than  one 
from  non-sectarian  schools.  1  am  willing  to  disciiss  this  ques- 
tion; I  think  it  a  practical  one,  and  would  do  it  courteously. 
But  first  give  me  the  text  of  your  sermon  delivered  at  the  dedica- 
tion of  Saint  Patrick's,  so  that  I  may  i^rint  it  and  adhere  to  it, 
and  that  ^-our  apologists  and  defenders  may  not  be  able  to  dodge 
it.  To  be  frank  with  you,  Father  Gleeson,  I  find  the  dialecti- 
cians of  your  Church  just  the  least  bit  slippery;  like  one  grasp- 
ing an  eel  from  the  fisherman's  basket,  a  stout  grasp  upon  the 
fattest  one  sometimes  leaves  only  a  glutinous  and  slimy  sensation 
to  the  hand.  I  should  like  to  nail  one  of  the  most  wrigglesome 
of  all  disputed  facts  to  the  counter,  and  hence,  most  respectfully, 
and  for  no  other  purpose  than  fair  and  courteous  argument,  do  I 
ask  you  to  send  to  the  Argonaut,  for  publication,  what  you  did 
Bay  in  reference  to  the  free  public  school  system  of  America. 
I  am,  very  respectfully,  your  obedient  servant. 

The  Editor  of  the  Argonaut. 
P.  S. — If  you  do  not   reply  to  this  I  shall  assume  that  your 
sermon  is  correctly  reported  by  the  Oakland  daily  Evening  Trib- 
une of  February  5th,  and  shall  feel  at  liberty  to  comment  upon, 
the  utterances  thei-em  attributed  to  vou. 


FATHER  GLEESON'S  REPLY. 


Editor  Argonaut  :  I  accept  with  pleasure  the  oft'er  you  made 
me  in  your  issue  of  the  seventeenth,  inviting  me  to  a  friendly 
discussion  of  the  Common  School  question.  I  have  already 
assigned  to  you,  in  my  private  note,  why  I  could  not  have 
attended  to  this  matter  at  an  earlier  moment.  I  quite  agree  witb 
you  that  this  is  a  practical  subject;  it  is  even,  in  my  opinion,  a 
most  important  subject,  for  on  the  kind  of  training  that  the 
youth  of  the  country  recei^-e  depends,  in  a  great  measure,  if  not 
entirely,  the  future  character  of  this  republic.  In  view  of  this 
serious  consideration,  it  is  easy  to  see  the  tone  and  temper  in 
which  a  subject  of  this  nature  should  be  approached.  There 
should  be  an  entire  absence  of  passion  and  prejudice  from  our 
reasoning,  while  a  courteous,  good-natured,  thoughtful  spirit 
should  prevail  through  all  our  arguments.  In  a  word,  we  should 
divest  ourselves,  as  far  as  possible,  of  all  preconceived  notions 
of  the  merits  or  demerits  of  the  system — not  allowing  party 
prejudice,  sectarian  bias,  or  religious  antipathy  to  influence  our 
minds.  Briefly,  we  should  approach  the  subject  in  a  generous, 
whole-souled,  liberal  frame  of  mind.  If  we  do  this— and  there 
is  no  good  reason  why  we  should  not,  for  both  of  us  are  now 
only  seeking  a  common  good — something  may  be  done  toward 
helping  others  to  a  right  understanding  of  this  much-vexed 
question.  And,  indeed,  sir,  from  the  courteous,  gentlemanly 
tone  ot  your  open  letter  to  me,  I  have  every  confidence  that  on 
your  part  the  discussion  will  not  be  marred  by  any  undue  expres- 
sion of  feeling;  while,  as  far  as  I  am  concerned,  if  i  can  answer 
for  myself,  I  am  sure  the  readers  of  the  Argonaut  Avill  not  have 
anything  to  complain  of  in  this  respect. 

The  great  difficulty  that  we  Catholics  have  hitherto  labored 
under  has  been  the  unwillingness  of  our  opponents  to  listen  to 
us  on  this  subject.  We  have  never  been  able  to  obtain  an  im- 
partial hearing  before  the  bar  of  public  opinion.  Our  adversar- 
ies made  up  their  minds  that  we  were  wiong — that  we  had  no 
case;  and  so,  whenever  we  tried  to  get  a  hearing,  the  peo^Dle 
stopped  their  ears  and  turned  away  in  displeasure  from  our 
pleadings.  In  fact,  strange  as  it  may  appear,  we  have  been 
treated  in  this  matter  of  the  education  of  our  children  somewhat 
in  the  same  fashion  as  the  early  Christians  were  by  the  pagan 
Roman  authorities.  Whenever  the  first  followers  of  the  Re- 
deemer tried  to  get  a  hearing,  and  endeavored  to  explain  them- 
selves, they  were  rebuked  by  those  in  authority,  and  told  tliat 
their  position  was  untenable.  In  like  manner  our  case  has  been 
prejudged.     Men  would  not  look  into  it  calmly  and  thoughtfully. 


[8] 

They  had  an  abidinpf  confidonro  in  their  own  jud^Mnent  that  we 
were  wron*,',  that  we  had  no  ur^'unient  to  ])ut  fortlr  to  Hustain  our 
])()sition,  and  that  we  Hhouhl  not  be  heard.  In  a  word,  hk  I  have 
s!iid,  nieii  shut  their  ears  ajjiiinst  uh,  repentinf,'  thereby  in  a  wider 
form  the  acts  of  tlje  anj,'ry  Jewish  multitude  in  the  case  of 
Stephen:  "And  they  ciyinj,'  out  with  a  hjud  voiee,  stopped 
their  ears,  and  with  one  accord  ran  violently  on  him." 

I  hail  it,  then,  with  pleii.sure,  as  a  sif,'n  of  better  tinies  and  an 
altered  state  of  feeling,  when  a  ('jithfdic  clerj,'ynian  is  invited  to 
jdead  his  ease  in  the  columns  of  nu  intluential  Prostestant 
journal;  for,  had  you  not  invited  me,  I  would  never  have  thought 
of  addressing  you  on  this  subject. 

In  saying,  as  I  have  above,  that  we  would  not  be  permitted  a 
hearing  before  the  bar  of  public  opinion  on  this  all-important 
subject,  I  do  not  hereby  mean  to  affirm  or  to  insinuate  that  the 
Piotestant  people  of  this  country  have  been  knowingly  and  will- 
fully doing  us  a  wrong.  We  are  ready  to  believe  that  the 
country  has  been  laboring  under  a  serious  misajipreheusion  in 
our  regard,  and  that,  if  we  have  not  been  heard,  it  was  owing  to 
the  fact  that  our  opponents  were  satisfied  that  our  position  was 
untenable  and  our  claims  inadmissible.  But,  sir,  history  fur- 
nishes numerous  examples  of  the  best-meaning  men  having  been 
grossly  deceived  under  similar  circumstances.  Indeed,  it  is  a 
noteworthy  fact,  and  one  I  am  sure  you  will  readily  acknowl- 
edge, that  some  of  the  best  and  purest  of  mortals  and  the 
greatest  and  most  powerful  of  nations  have  not  unfrequently 
labored  under  delusions  of  this  character,  and  been  uncon- 
sciously' guilty  of  the  grossest  injustice  towards  others.  As  far 
as  individuals  are  concerned,  the  case  of  the  Apostle  of  the 
Gentiles,  before  his  conversion,  when  hastening  to  Damascus, 
breathing  out,  as  the  divine  volume  t^ssures  us.  threatenings  and 
slaughter  against  the  disciples  of  the  Lord,  may  be  adduced  as 
an  instance.  \Mio  Mill  be  ready  to  say  that  this  fiery  zealot, 
this  man  of  blood  and  slaughter,  was  not  honest  in  his  convic- 
tions— that  he  was  not  impressed  with  the  justice  of  his  cause? 
Must  we  not  suppose  that  he  thought  that  the  course  he  was 
pursuing  was  most  pleasing  to  God?  Nor  was  it  until  the  scales 
fell  from  his  eyes  that  he  saw  the  full  measure  of  the  wrong 
he  was  doing  to  the  meek  followers  of  the  Redeemer. 

The  course  adopted  by  tlie  younger  Pliny,  when  governor  of 
Pontus  and  Bythinia,  as  related  by  himself  in  his  letter  to  the 
Koman  Emperor  Trajan,  is  another  illustration  of  this.  So  con- 
vinced was  he  that  the  Christians  under  his  jurisdiction  merited 
punishment  that  he  says:  "  Williout  r.yamihiiuj  whether  what 
thev  avowed  was  criminal,  I  had  not  the  smallest  doubt  that  at 
least  their  obstinacy  and  headstrongness  men'/ed  puni.'ihme)it." 
Then  we  know  how  the  prejudices  and  passions  of  the  most 
popular  writers  and  historians  of  that  period  prevented  them 
from  seeing  the  errors  under  which  they  were  laboring  and  the 
wronjj  thev  were  inflicting  on  others.     Who,  for  instance,  is  not 


[9] 

familiar  with  the  sentiment  of  Tacitus  in  his  estimation  of  the 
Christians  in  his  clay?  Does  he  not  say  that  they  were  branded 
with  deserved  infamy  ?  "  With  this  view  he  (Neroj  inflicted  the 
most  exquisite  tortures  on  those  who,  under  the  vulgar  appella- 
tion of  Christians,  were  alreadij  hranded  with  deserved  infamy." 
And  in  another  place  the  same  eminent  -v^riter  says:  '"The 
guilt  of  the  Christians  deserved  indeed  the  most  exemplary  pun- 
ishment." In  like  manner,  the  histoi'ian  Suetonius  calls  the 
Christians  of  that  time  "  a  sect  of  men  who  embraced  a  criminal 
supfri^tUion." 

And  as  it  has  been  with  individuals,  so  has  it  also  been  with 
States  and  Empires  in  this  respect.  The  pagan  Roman  Empire 
for  three  hundred  years  thought  that  it  was  right  in  attempting 
to  stamp  out  of  existence  the  noblest  form  of  religious  belief 
that  had  ever  been  professed  by  man  on  earth.  It  regarded  the 
followers  of  the  Redeemer  as  the  most  senseless  of  mortals.  It 
could  not,  or  would  not,  understand  why  a  mere  handful  of  men, 
on  the  ground  of  what  they  denominated  conscientious  convic- 
tions, should  separate  themselves  from  the  citizens  in  general, 
and  stubbornly  refuse  a  willing  and  hearty  compliance  with  all 
that  was  ordained  by  the  laws.  Was  not  Ctesar  the  Pontifex  Maxi- 
mus,  and  did  it  not  devolve  upon  him  to  prescribe  for  the  com- 
munity the  duties  to  be  fuUfilied?  What  was  there  in  the  burn- 
ing of  a  spoonful  of  incense  before  the  shrine  of  an  idol  ?  Were 
not  the  tutelary  deities — the  Lares  and  the  Penates — the  real 
benefactors  of  the  country?  Did  not  the  empire  grow  up,  ex- 
pand, and  become  great  under  their  protecting  care  ?  And  why 
under  such  circumstances  should  a  mere  vulgar  sect,  a  '''genus 
hominun  saperstdiovis  novo  etc  malfjlco,"  as  Suetonius  calls  them, 
dare  to  stand  aloof  and  refuse  to  juin  with  their  fellow  men,  the 
community  in  general,  inprocessionsin  honor  of  these  beneficent 
gods  ?  Did  not  the  refusal  on  their  part  prove  them  to  be  dan- 
gei'ous  citizens,  unloyal  subjects,  dark  conspirators,  imbued  with 
the  most  nefai'ious  and  reprehensible  principles?  This  was  the 
reasoning-— this  the  attitude  of  the  ablest  and  most  enlightened 
men  of  that  pagan  period;  and,  as  j'ou  know,  it  required  no  less 
than  three  hundred  years  to  disabuse  them  of  these  erroneous 
ideas  and  the  great  insufierable  wrong  they  were  perpetrating 
against  a  large  number  of  virtuous  citizens 

Nor  has  it  been  merely  in  pagan  times  that  such  things  have 
happened.  I  regret  to  be  obliged  to  confess  that  like  instances 
of  delusions  are  to  be  met  with  in  the  history  of  Christendom. 
Take,  for  instance,  the  case  of  Great  Britain  and  Ireland.  Is 
it  not  to  be  held,  would  it  not  be  unfair  to  atHrm  that  the  gov- 
erning powers  of  England,  during  what  is  called  the  penal 
times,  were  unconscious  of  the  wrong  they  were*  perpetrating 
against  millions  of  the  people  in  the  enactment  and  enforce- 
ment of  those  terrible  laws  of  which  eveiy  Englishman  is  to-day 
heartily  ashamed — laws  of  which  that  eminent  and  fair-minded 
man,  Johnson,  affirmed  that  as  a  "  sanguinary  code  it  outstripped 


[  10  J 

in  atrocity  the  Ten  Persecutions  inflicted  on  tlio  curly  ChnHtians 
by  pagan  Rome  " — lawH  wliicb  tliat  j^reat  statesman  Edmund 
Burke  doHcribod  as  "  a  machine  of  wise  and  elaborate  contriv- 
ance, as  well  litted  for  the  oi)pre9sion,  impoverishment,  and  deg- 
radation of  the  people,  and  the  debasement  in  them  of  }iumaa 
nature  itself,  as  ever  proceeded  from  the  perverted  irjgenuity  of 
man"? 

I  think,  then,  that  on  this  point  I  may  fairly  assume  that  we 
are  fully  in  accord^namely,  that  men  and  states  may  be,  and 
have  been,  unconsciously  guilty  of  serious  wrong  toward  others; 
and  that  the  only  security  against  anything  of  this  nature  occur- 
ring or  being  continued,  when  a  large  and  influential  body  of  the 
community  proclaim  that  they  are  being  injured  and  their  rights 
tramjiled  under  foot,  is  by  giving  them  a  hearing,  and  listening 
calmly,  attentively,  and  dispassionately  to  all  they  have  to  say  in 
support  of  their  assertions.  Any  other  course  would  be  like 
that  of  the  judge  who  had  formed  his  opinion  before  taking  his 
seat  on  the  bench.  It  would  be  to  forestall  justice,  to  close  the 
lips  of  counsel,  to  put  prejudice  in  the  place  cf  reason,  and  to 
deprive  the  individual  of  that  principle  of  natural  justice  which 
requires  that  a  man  be  heard  l)efore  being  condemned. 

1  have  deemed  it  necessary  to  make  the  foregoing  explanations 
in  order  to  prepare  the  minds  of  your  readers  for  what  I  am 
about  to  say,  and  to  enable  them  to  properl}'  appreciate  the 
anomalous  i:)osition  we  occupy  to  the  common  schools  of  this 
country,  which,  as  Ave  claim,  and  I  think  I  will  be  able  to  make 
it  apparent,  are  an  infringement  of  our  rights,  natural  and  con- 
stitutional, and  an  intolerable  grievance  to  which  we  are  neces- 
sitated to  submit.  But;  as  in  all  similar  instances  where  wrong 
was  unconsciously  done, time  has  rectified  the  same,  so,  also,  in 
this  case  I  have  an  abiding  faith  that  this  couutry  will  yet  see 
the  injustice  it  is  inflicting  on  us  in  the  matter  of  the  forced  edu- 
cation of  our  children,  and  will,  when  it  comes  to  recognize  this, 
admit  us  to  a  full  participation  of  our  natural  and  inherent  rights. 

I  shall  now^  proceed  to  the  consideration  of  the  matter  under 
discussion  and  I  hope  to  be  able  to  convince  the  readers  of  the 
Argonaut  that  much  misapprehension  exists  in  the  mind  of  the 
Protestant  community  regarding  the  relations  of  the  Catholics 
of  the  country  toward  this  system  of  national  education:  ihat 
our  attitude  in  its  regard  is  not  an  unnatural  and  unreasonable 
one;  that  it  is  a  violation  of  our  most  sacred  rights  and  privi- 
leges; that  in  it  we  have  a  real  and  substantial  grievance;  and, 
in  fine,  that  it  is  in  its  nature  and  workings  contrary  to  that 
spirit  of  freedom  and  liberty  guaranteed  to  us  all  by  the  Con- 
stitution of  the  country.  But,  first,  it  may  be  proper  to  state 
the  position  o|  the  Catholic  Church  in  regard  to  the  sy-tem  of 
public  school  education  as  established   by  law  in  this  country. 

The  Catholic  Church  has  ever  held  and  taught  that  to  be  a 
defective,  dangerous  system  of  education,  both  for  the  individual 
and  the  state,  from  which  the  moral,  religious  elements  is  wholly 


[31] 

eliminated.  She  holds  that  as  man  is  a  complex  being,  com- 
posed of  body  and  soul,  and  having  eternal  as  well  as  temporal  in- 
terests he  should  be  so  trained  from  his  earliest  infancy  that  while 
being  fitted  for  the  attainment  of  the  one  he  may  not  be  made  to 
lose  sight  of  the  other.  In  short,  she  gives  to  education  its  full, 
complete  and  entire  signification — that  is,  a  perfect  discii^line  and 
training  of  all  the  mental  and  moral  faculties.  And  that  this  can 
not  be  attained  except  by  a  constant  and  careful  inculcation  of  the 
necessary  principles,  reason  and  experience  sufficiently  demon- 
strate. This  is  exactly  the  position  of  the  Catholic  Church — • 
this  the  light  in  which  she  regards  education.  And  wherever 
a  contrary  system  has  prevailed,  she  has  uniformly  raised  her 
voice  against  it  in  her  loudest  and  most  emphatic  tones,  knowing 
full  well  from  experience  the  evils  that  necessarily  result  to  the 
the  individual,  to  the  family,  to  society  and  government,  from  a 
development  of  the  mental  to  the  exclusion  of  the  moral  facul- 
ties. It  is  not,  then,  against  the  present  system  of  education  as 
an  American  system  that  we  object,  but  against  ever-y  system 
that  would  leave  the  youthful  mind  a  blank  in  the  matter  of 
religions  knowledge,  and  our  entire  solicitude  in  this  regard  ia 
founded  on  that  expression  of  our  Divine  Master,  "What  doth 
it  profit  a  man  to  gain  the  whole  world  and  suffer  the  loss  of  his 
own  soul  ?  " 

We  also  maintain,  and  with  the  best  of  reasons,  as  I  shall 
show  further  on,  that,  without  the  moral  element  in  the  educa- 
tion of  the  young,  you  can  not  have  even  a  satisfactory  guarantee 
for  the  stability  of  the  nation;  but  for  the  present  I  shall  confine 
myself  to  the  religious  view  of  the  question  as  regards  man's 
spiritual  nature.  We  maintain,  then,  that  religious  instruction, 
coupled  with  secular  principles  of  learning,  constitute  the  very 
soul  and  essence  of  education,  and  that,  without  such  an  union, 
education  would  be  as  if  "  the  play  of  '  Hamlet'  were  given 
with  the  part  of  the  Prince  of  Denmark  left  oiit."  To  this  you 
may  possibly  answer  by  saying  that  religious  instruction  is  in- 
deed necessary  in  forming  the  Christian  man,  and  that  the  only 
difficulty  is  as  to  where  it  should  be  imparted.  The  church  and 
not  the  school,  you  may  contend,  is  the  proper  place  for  the 
inculcation  of  moral  principles.  Are  you  serious  in  this  ?  Do 
you  believe  that  a  child  that  is  exposed  during  six  days  of  the 
week  to  the  adverse  influence  of  a  purely  secular  trainin  g,  who 
for  six  days  in  the  week  is  not  permitted  to  hear  the  name  of 
God  or  a  syllable  about  morality,  will  grow  up  a  strong  and 
robust  member  of  an}'  Christian  denomination  ?  To  assert  that 
would  be  to  trifle  with  our  reason  and  insult  our  judgment.  It 
would  be  to  affirm  what  actual  experience  flatly  contradicts  by 
the  most  undeniable  statistics,  as  I  shall  presently  show. 

But  the  State,  you  will  say,  is  the  judge  in  this  matter;  it  has 
a  right,  and  it  is  its  dut}',  to  see  that  the  children  of  the  country 
are  properly  educated  according  to  their  station  in  life,  for  upon 
the  enlightenment  and  education  of  the  people  depend  the  great- 


ne.ss  iiud  cxiMtciicc  of  tlio  nation.  Are  not  the  publrc  hcIiooIh  of 
the  country  tho  very  palhidiuni  of  our  liberties?  Wlio  does  not 
know  tbdt  i)ublic  seliool  education  is  uecosHary  for  our  repubb- 
cau  form  of  Government — that  it  is  the  ver}-  bfe  and  soul  of  the 
nation  ?  Is  it  not  an  admitted  axiom  that  our  (iovernment, 
more  than  an}'  other,  depends  upon  the  intelli;,''ence  of  the  peo- 
ple? Did  not  the  framers  of  our  Constitution  firmly  believe 
that  a  rei)ublicau  form  of  Government  could  not  endure  without 
the  enlifjhtenmeut  of  the  people?  The  State,  therefore,  must 
exert  itself  to  promote  and  encoura^^e  pojiular  educiiiion  among 
the  masses,  and  surely  there  is  no  more  elifectual  way  of  accomp- 
lishing this  than  by  the  present  system  of  public  instruction, 
where  all  are  at  liberty  to  drink  with  freedom  and  without  cost 
at  the  fountain  of  learning. 

This  is  the  popular  phraseology,  the  transparent  sophistry, 
the  vapid  declamation,  that  has  been  repeated  iisquf.  ad  iiausfam 
for  the  last  couple  of  generations  and  upward  in  this  country. 
It  is  in  reality  the  popular  cry  by  which  the  ear  of  the  multitude 
is  gained,  or  rather  it  is  the  hobby-horse  on  which  ambitious 
aspirants  for  office  and  enterprising  editors  have  been  riding  the 
people  to  power  and  to  wealth  for  the  last  half  a  century  or  more. 
For  only  let  a  candidate  for  honors  shout  lustily  in  the  ears  of 
his  auditors  a  few  such  meaningless  platitudes  as  thjse  I  have 
mentioned,  coupling  them,  of  coarse,  with  the  veracious  asser- 
tion that  the  Catholic  (Jhurch  is  the  deadly  and  uncompromising 
enemy  of  our  popular  institutions,  and  he  will  infallibly  succeed 
in  obtaining  the  suffrages  of  his  dupes.  The  people  never  stop 
nor  care  to  inquire  whether  or  not  the  Catholic  Church  is  really 
hostile  to  the  enlightenment  of  the  masses.  They  take  it  as 
granted  that  such  i?;  the  case  because  they  hear  it  from  their 
popular  leaders  -men  of  enlightenment  and  intelligence  in 
whom  they  have  every  confidence.  But  how  great  would  not  be 
their  surprise  if  assured  that  the  Catholic  Church  is  as  eager,  and 
more  so,  than  the  government  of  the  country,  for  the  spread  of 
education  and  the  enlightenment  of  the  people — the  only  differ- 
ence between  the  Church  and  the  State  on  this  matter  being  that 
the  former  demands  more  than  the  latter  in  the  traiuing  of  youth. 

■\Ve  Catholics,  then,  freely  admit  that  it  is  the  right  and  duty 
of  the  State  to  see  that  the  children  of  the  country  are  educated 
in  the  necessary  branches  of  learning,  but  at  the  same  time  we 
emphatically  deny  that  it  is  the  right  or  mission  of  the  State  to 
assume  to  'itself' the  office  of  teacher.  It  has  no  right  to  turn 
pedagogue,  and,  armed  by  the  power  of  the  law,  to  invade  the 
sacred  precincts  of  the  family  circle,  and,  dragging  thence  the 
little  ones  from  the  parental  hearths,  to  say  to  their  natural  guar- 
dians: "  I  will  take  charge  of  these  children  and  instruct  them 
in  the  manner  I  please ."  To  do  so  is  to  be  guilty  of  the  greatest 
moral  injustice— it  is  to  play  the  tyrant  in  the  most  tyrannical 
fashion;  for,  bear  in  mind,  sir,  the  State  has  no  children,  never 
had  anv.  and  never  will  have  any.     The  children  of  the  country 


[13    I 

are  belonoing  to  the  people  of  the  nation,  and  not  to  the  gov- 
erning members  of  the  community — that  is,  not  to  the  bare  ma- 
jority of  the  populace. 

And  now,  for  a  moment,  let  lis  here  inquire  what  is  the  State, 
and  why  does  it  assume  this  sovereign  avithority  in  the  matter  of 
the  education  of  the  youth.  The  State,  as»  I  ajiprehend  it,  is 
merely  the  executive  of  the  people.  It  originated  in  every  in- 
stance in  that  natural  desire  of  man  for  the  attainment  of  certain 
goods,  such  as  peace,  protection,  etc.,  which  could  not  be  so 
readily  obtained  by  individuals  or  limited  corj^orations.  In  fact, 
the  State  is  nothiug  but  the  people  united  to  accomplish  what  as 
individuals  or  companies  they  would  be  unable  to  do.  Its  duty, 
then,  is  simply  to  administer  justice,  to  protect  rights,  to  guard 
interests,  and,  in  a  word,  to  hold  the  balance  evenl}'-  between  all 
parties.  This  is  the  Chiistian  idea  of  the  State.  The  old  pagan 
idea  was  different.  Cresar  was  then  the  State;  the  people  be- 
longed to  him,  they  were  his  creatures,  their  lives  were  in  his 
hands,  and  he  did  with  them  pretty  much  as  he  pleased — in  fact, 
as  you  know,  they  were  "  butchered  to  make  a  Eoman  holiday." 
The  same  undue  assumption  of  authority  was  affected  in  later 
times  by  some  Christian  monarchs.  It  was  embodied  in  that 
arrogant  expression  of  a  certain  King  of  France,  who,  on  an 
occasion,  said  to  one  of  his  subjects:  "  L'etat  c'ent  moi  !  " — I  am 
the  State  !  The  autocrat  of  Eussia  is  the  State  in  his  do- 
minions, but,  thank  God,  this  is  not  the  condition  of  affairs 
here.  With  us  the  State  is  the  guardian  of  the  rights  and 
liberties  of  the  people,  and  not  their  tyrannical  master.  Hence, 
whenever  the  State  proposes  to  do  anything  which  would  be  an 
infringement  of  the  natural,  inherent  rights  of  the  subject,  such 
as  the  forcing  of  conscience  or  the  standing  between  the  parent  and 
the  child,  the  State  in  that  case  is  plainly  outstripping  the  limits 
of  its  authority  and  rendering  itself  guilty  of  an  atrocious 
crime.  It  is  assuming  to  itself  duties  which  the  Almighty  im- 
poses on  others;  it  is  bringing  back  again  into  the  world  and 
giving  effect  to  the  old  feudal  system,  which  made  the  subjects 
the  slaves  and  dependents  of  the  masters.  In  short,  it  is  utter- 
ing the  language  of  the  tyrant:  ''Sic  rolo,  aic  juheo."  Be- 
tween that  and  the  establishment  of  a  national  form  of  faith,  to 
which  we  would  be  all  bound  to  conform,  there  is  in  reality  only 
one  step;  for  if  the  State  claims  the  children  of  the  country, 
there  is  no  good  reason  why  it  should  not  claim  the  parents  also. 
In  principle  and  at  bottom,  then,  this  school  system  is  tyran- 
nical, oppressive,  and  unjust.  No  pagan  Roman  Emperor,  no 
■Russian  autocrat,  no  oriental  despot,  ever  acted  with  more  ab- 
solute authority  and  disregard  for  the  feelings  and  wishes  of  the 
subject  than  the  State  is  acting  in  this  particular  in  our  regard. 

The  system  is  also  irreligious  and  sectarian.  Persons  get 
angry  and  annoyed  with  us  when  we  tell  them  it  is  pagan  and 
infidel;  but  if  you  eliminate  all  that  is  Christian,  what,  I  would 
ask,    can    the   residue   be    but  pagan  and    infidel?      Doiabtless 


[  1^  ] 

I  will  bo  told  tliiit  tlioro  is  a  clifference  between  secularism  and 
l)agauism.  This  is  merely  to  tlii'ow  dust  in  our  eyes.  Every 
tree  is  judged  by  its  fruit,  and  if  the  fruit  in  this  case  be  infidel, 
or,  what  is  the  same,  an  abandonment  of  the  practice  of  all 
Christian  duties,  the  inference  is  plain  that  the  s^'stem  is  infidel. 
You  can't  have  an  eflect  without  a  cause,  and  if  the  efTect  in  tlie 
case  of  the  j)ublic  school  teaching  is  infidelity,  the  logical  conse- 
quence is  that  the  cause  is  and  must  be  infidel.  But  where  is 
the  evidence,  you  will  say,  to  show  that  the  result  of  the  com- 
mon school  teaching  is  this?  On  this  point,  I  think,  in  all  fair- 
ness, that  the  testimony  of  six  millions  of  people — that  is,  the 
declaration  of  the  entire  Catholic  population  of  this  countiy — 
ought  to  be  considered  tolerably  satisfactory.  As  far  as  our  own 
children  are  concerned,  and  1  jiresume  that  we  may  fairly  infer 
that  it  is  the  same  with  all  others,  this  is  what  we  have  to  deplore. 
For  those  brought  up  in  the  public  schools,  in  ninety  cases  out 
of  a  hundred,  cease  to  be  practical  members  of  our  church,  drift 
i-apidly  away  into  indiffereutism,  and,  if  thej-  hold  anything  at 
all,  end  by  becoming  disciples  of  such  men  as  Buckner,  Spencer, 
or  Augustus  Comte.  But  if  you  will  not  accept  Catholic  testimony 
on  this  point,  if  you  will  rule  it  out  of  court  as  being  ex  parte 
evidence.  I  am  sure  you  will  at  least  accejit  Protestant  testi- 
mony. And  I  won't  go  beyond  your  own  city  for  admissions  that 
infidelity  and  atheism  are  rami)ant  in  the  community,  and  that 
the  only  remedy  is  the  inculcation  of  moral  principles.  In 
1877,  the  Rev.  Doctor  Jewell,  deploring  the  social  condition  of 
aflairs  in  San  Francisco,  was  reported  in  the  Call  to  have  said: 
"  The  evils  which  have  been  experienced  in  San  Francisco,  which 
break  out  on  occasions  of  agitation,  are  caused  by  local  faults, 
atheism,  cjodlest^ness  of  the  commtDiily,  and  disrespect  fur  authority." 
On  the  same  day  the  Rev.  Mr.  Peck,  of  St.  Luke's  Episcopal 
Church,  said:  "The  popular  atheism  of  the  day,  proclaimed 
with  so  much  boldness  and  applause  in  the  public  assemblies,  is 
bearing  its  bitter  fruits.  There  is  only  one  remedy  for  all  this: 
Remember  the  Lord  thy  God."  Again,  Doctor  Patterson,  of  the 
First  Presbyterian  Church,  declared,  according  to  the  report  of 
his  sermon  of  the  same  date,  that  "the  fault  of  the  wild,  com- 
munistic infidel  feeling  which  is  spreading  through  the  com- 
munity, is  the  want  of  proper  education."  And  how  terrible,  and 
savage,  and  lawless  this  spirit  of  atheism  and  infidelity  which  is 
lurking  in  the  community  is,  you  may  judge  from  the  words  of 
that  very  able  and  distinguished  divine.  Doctor  Stebbins:  "  And 
beneath  the  fair  amenities  of  law,  manners,  opinion  and  faith, 
there  lurks  a  spirit  wild  and  savage  and  brutal  as  the  Turk  before 
he  left  his  native  place  in  the  northern  mountains  and  encamped 
beside  the  cities  of  the  south.  There  are  thousands  in  this  city, 
not  yet  a  great  city  in  modern  times,  who  are  Thugs  in  every 
fibre  of  their  frame  as  truly  as  the  robber  that  threw  his  javelin 
or  strangled  the  unwary  traveler  on  the  banks  of  the  Ganges." 
I   will   quote  only  one  more — namely.  Doctor   Piatt,  of    Grace 


['15  ] 

Church.  On  the  21st  of  October,  1877,  Doctor  Piatt  said  in  his 
sermon:  "As  Protestants  we  should  Christianize  our  education; 
because,  first,  if  our  secular  schools  were  instituted  exclusively 
to  build  up  Protestantism  they  were  a  great  blunder,  for  they  are 
breaking  it  doivn."  Mark  that!  "Secular  schools,"  continued 
the  Doctor,  "in  the  interest  of  Protestantism  are  a  fatal  blun- 
der    Secularism  saves  nothing — not  eve^^i  itself As  to 

Protestantism,  it  is  only  a  question  of  time  when  our  jyresent  sys- 
tem will  render  it  a  dead  factor.  The  issue  is  by  these  schools 
narrowing  the  contest  down  to  Romanism  on  the  one  hand  and 
infidelity  on  the  other As  American  citizens  we  should  Christ- 
ianize   our   education when  religion  fails  all  fails."     And 

further  on  in  the  same  discourse  he  said:  "  The  danger  to  civil 
liberty  is  not  from  ecclesiasticism,  but  from  those  degraded  dis- 
ciples of  secularism. — those  Bible-hating,  Sabbath-breaking,  God- 
deriding  cormorants  of  office,  who  make  a  trade  of  politics  and 
live  upon  what  the}'^  can  plunder  of  the  public  taxes." 

It  is  not  merely  the  leading  liberal  ministers  of  the  day  who 
are  opening  their  eyes  to  this  terrible  evil,  but  the  leading  jour- 
nalists and  the  leading  statesman  of  the  time  are  also  sharing 
their  ideas.  Not  to  go  beyond  San  Francisco,  one  of  the  fore- 
most editors,  Mr.  Loring  Pickering,  commenting  on  one  of  Doc- 
tor Piatt's  discourses  on  education,  said:  "  With  many  of  the 
sentiments  he  uttered  the  Gall  is  in  full  sympathy.  The  neces- 
sity of  combining  moral  education  with  intellectual  education  is 
so  apparent  that  discussion  on  this  point  would  be  superfluous." 
In  other  words,  Mr.  Pickering  acknowledges  this  principle  that 
we  Catholics  are  contending  for.  Again,  in  the  Call  of  the  5th 
of  August,  1877,  I  read  these  words:  "  The  ddl's  usual  Sunday 
letter  from  Boston  stated  that  a  large  number  of  public  men  had 
come  to  the  conclusion  that  the  public  school  system  of  that  city 
was  a.  failure."  To  this  I  will  add  the  testimon}^  of  Mr.  Richard 
Grant  White,  as  given  in  an  article  in  the  North  American  Review 
■  for  December,  1880,  and  entitled  "  The  Public  School  Failure:" 

"  There  is  probably  not  oneof  those  various  social  contrivances, 
political  engines,  or  modes  of  common  action  called  institutions, 
which  are  regarded  as  characteristic  of  the  United  States,  if  not 
peculiar  to  them,  in  which  the  people  of  this  country  have  placed 
more  confidence  or  felt  greater  pride  than  its  public  school 
system.  There  is  not  one  of  them  so  umoorthy  of  either  confi- 
dence or  pride;  not  one  which  has  failed  so  completely  to  accom- 
l^lish  the  end  for  which  it  was  established."  And  in  another 
place  he  says:  "  Crime  and  vice  have  increased  almost  pari 
jmssu  with  the  development  of  the  public  school  system,  which, 
instead  of  lifting  the  masses,  has  given  us  in  their  jilace  a  non- 
descript and  hybrid  class." 

So  you  can  see  that  we  Catholics  are  not  the  only  persons  who 
think  that  the  j^resent  system  of  education  is  an  imperfect  one,  and 
ought  to  be  ameliorated.  You  may,  however,  say  that  after  all 
this  is  only  very  partial  evidence,  and  hardly  satisfactory.     Very 


[  Ifi  J 

well,  tlioii;  I'll  give  yoii  more  and  jnoie  Ktill,  until  I  think  you 
will  u('kn()\vl(Mlgc  tbat  it  is  tin;  opinion  of  Konio  of  tlio  niOKt 
thoughtful  nu'n  in  tho  IMotcKtiint  Cliuich  thiit  there  is  little  or 
no  hoj)e  for  the  countiy  witliout  combining  religious  with  seeular 
education.  In  1870  or  1871-1  think  it  was  the  latter  date — 
there  as.seiubled  at  Oberlin,  Ohio,  thirty  j)residents  of  American 
colleges  to  attend  the  annual  meeting  of  the  Central  College  As- 
sociation. All  these  gentlemen  were  Protestants,  and  men  of 
fine  culture  and  ability.  Professor  Finney,  a  gentleman  well 
and  favorably  known  in  the  Eastern  States,  addressed  the  meet- 
ing, and  laid  it  down  as  an  incontrovertible  truth  that  religion 
must  be  taught  in  connection  with  education.  At  the  clo.se  of 
the  meeting  the  following  resolutions  were  adopted: 

First. — "  That  we  note  with  i)leasure  the  evidences  of  increas- 
ing interest  in  the  literary,  scientilic,  and  especially  the  religious 
education  of  the  youth  of  our  land,  believing,  as  we  do,  that 
education  not  based  vpon  C/u-iftian  truth  is  of  (lUfstionalile  value." 

Second. — "  That  we  commend  these  interests  to  the  sympa- 
thies, prayers,  and  liberality  of  Christian  people  and  congre- 
gations, that  our  schools  may  be  increasingly  useful  as  fountains, 
not  only  of  sound  instruction,  l)ul  also  of  earned,  elevated  j)iety." 

Again,  as  far  back  as  1848,  when  infiedelity  was  not  as  ram- 
pant as  it  is  to-day,  the  General  Presbyterian  Assembly  of 
America  resolved  upon  recommending  to  their  congregations  the 
necessity  of  erecting  primary  and  other  schools,  where  the  teach- 
ing and  duties  of  religion  should  be  carried  on  in  connection 
with  the  usual  branches  of  secular  learning.  To  the  foregoing 
I  will  add  onh'  another  testimony.  It  is  that  which  was  de- 
livered at  the  Convention  of  the  Southern  Bajitists,  held  in 
Marion,  Alabama,  on  the  12th  of  April,  lb81,  when  it  was 
affirmed  "  that  the  tendency  of  the  common  school  system  was 
to  foster  injidelity,"  anti  that  "  the  only  hope  is  Christian  educa- 
tion in  our  oavu  schools." 

I  could  give  you  almost  numberless  other  instances  of  like 
disapproval  on  the  jmrt  of  Protestant  gentlemen  of  education 
divorced  from  religion;  but,  sir,  I  think  you  will  acknowledge 
from  the  instances  I  have  adduced  that  Catholics  are  not  the 
only  persons  in  the  community  who  object  to  purely  secular 
education  aj^ait  from  religious  instruction.  I  sincerely  hope 
that  the  day  maj-  not  be  far  distant  when  Catholic  and  Protes- 
tant clergymen  will  stand  on  the  same  platform  and  fight  in  the 
the  same  lines  when  battling  for  the  accomplishment  of  this  so 
much  needed  educational  reform.  And  unless  some  such  action 
as  this  is  taken,  and  taken  very  soon,  too,  I  most  confidently  pre- 
dict that  in  a  couple  of  generations  the  grass  will  be  growing 
before  most  of  the  church  doors  of  America,  and  Bob  Inger- 
soll's  prophesy  will  be  fulfilled — viz.,  that  the  public  schools 
will  be  the  future  cathedrals  of  our  nation. 

I  have  said  above  that  the  system  of  education  as  established 
by  law  in  tlfls  country'  is  not  only  irreligious,  but  sectarian,  and 


[17] 

even  the  very  worst  of  sectarianism  at  that.  This  may,  and 
doubtless  will,  sound  startling  in  your  ears;  for  your  uniform 
boast  ever  has  been  that  the  foremost  schools  of  this  country 
have  been  founded  upon  and  are  sustained  by  the  very  contrary 
principle.  Let  us  see  for  a  moment  how  far  this  may  be  true. 
What  is  sectarianism  ?  As  I  apprehend  it,  it  is  an  adherence  to 
a  particular  religious  denomination.  This,  I  believe,  is  the 
definition  generall}^  given  of  it  by  lexicographers.  Hence,  any 
individual,  any  government  or  authority  that  in  the  case  of  con- 
flicting religious  claims  would  lean  more  to  one  party  than  an- 
other, that  would  favor  one  sect  more  than  another,  may 
be  most  truly  said  to  be  sectarian.  And  now,  sir,  this  is 
precisely  what  the  government  of  this  country  is  doing  in 
the  case  of  the  public  school  system  of  education.  Instead  of 
holding  the  balance  evenly  between  all  parties,  it  is,  though  it- 
self Christian,  leaning  to  the  side  of  infidelity;  it  is  supporting 
the  infidel  sect,  for  by  excluding  God  and  religion  from  the 
schools,  it  is  throwing  all  its  weight  on  the  side  of  those  who 
deny  the  existence  of  a  personal  God.  You  may  tell  me  that 
infidelity  is  not  a  sect;  indeed,  sir,  it  is  just  as  much  a  sect  as 
the  thousand  and  one  that  under  ooe  denomination  or  another 
exist  among  Protestants.  There  never  was  a  man  that  hadn't 
some  belief.  "  M}' religion,"  said  a  certain  individual,  "is  to 
have  no  religion  "  There  is  no  such  a  thing  as  pure  negation, 
absolute  unbelief.  Even  those  who  are  styled  the  most  ad- 
vanced thinkers  of  our  times  have  their  peculiar  tenets  and 
forms  of  belief.  You  know,  sir,  for  you  are  reputed  to  be  a  well- 
read  man,  what  such  men  as  Augustus  Comte,  Herbert  Spencer, 
and  Mr.  Mill  hold  and  teach.  I  don't  put  in  this  category  Hux- 
ley, Tyndall  and  Wallace,  for  they  have  not  yet  got  quite  as  far 
as  their  confreres.  Well,  is  it  not  true  that  though  Comte  fiatlj' 
denies  the  existence  of  any  personal  God  as  the  creator  and  jjre- 
server  of  the  universe,  he  yet  belives  in  the  "correlation  of 
forces  "  ?  Has  he  not  written  a  catechism  of  Positive  Religion, 
and  even  a  Positivist  Calendar  ?  Does  not  Mr.  Mill,  though  re- 
jecting Comte's  God,  or  collective  humanity,  maintain  that  the 
proper  symbol  of  the  "grand  etre "  is  woman,  or  the  nexe 
aimante  ?  Does  not  Mr.  Spencer  offer  up  his  orisons  at  the  altar 
of  the  great  unknown,  while  good-natured  Mr.  Huxley  would 
be  satisfied  with  adoration  of  the  silent  kind  ?  Ah,  sir,  it  has 
been  well  said  that  "  God  gave  us  religion,  but  the  devil  gave 
us  theology."  So  you  see  that  infidelity  has  its  doctrines  and 
its  dogmas,  and  is  accoi'dingly  as  much  a  sect  as  anj^  other  that 
exists  among  Christians.  And  now,  is  it  fair,  is  it  just,  for  the 
State  to  lend  its  aid  and  support  to  this  individual  sect  in  pre- 
ference to  all  others  ?  Therefore,  I  say  that  the  public  school 
system  of  this  country  is  sectarian  in  its  character  and  working. 
And  now,  looking  at  this  matter  in  a  general  senae,  is  it  not 
a  very  anomalous  position  for  a  Christian  State  to  assume  when 
it  undertakes  to  educate  the  children  of  the  country  in  any  but  a 


[18] 

CliriMtian  manner?  It  can  not  be  Haid  that  the  State  is  not 
Christian,  for  it  is.  Of  its  ChriHtian  cliaractcr  it  can  never  di- 
vest itself.  It  is  Christian  in  its  constitution,  Christian  in  its 
laws,  Christian  in  its  traditions,  Christian  in  its  civilization. 
And  yet  this  Christian  State  refuses  to  teacli  the  diildren  of  the 
country  in  a  Christian  manner.  It  proposes-  to  teach  virtue  with- 
out relip[ion,  morality  without  dogma.  This,  sir,  is  essaying  the 
impossible,  it  is  attempting  what  can  not  be  done.  As  well 
might  one  attempt  to  erect  an  edifice  without  a  foundation,  or 
to  hope  for  an  eft'ect  without  a  cause.  "NVe  don't  expect  a  crop 
without  a  sowing;  neither  should  we  exi)ect  virtue  without  the 
inculcation  of  moral  princi])les. 

Even  in  a  purely  temporal  sense, apart  entirely  from  man's  spirit, 
nal  interests,  be  assured  of  it  that  this  system  is  a  dangerous  one- 
and  will  inevitably  sooner  or  later  make  itself  unfavoral)ly  felt. 
It  will  undermine  the  very  foundations  of  the  government  of  the 
country.  There  is  abundant  evidence  in  the  history  of  the  p.ast 
to  show  that  governments  that  rested  on  mere  material  civiliza- 
tion had  not  the  proper  foundation.  "What  nations  in  their  day 
were  greater  than  ancient  Egypt,  Greece  or  Kome  ?  "Where  was 
civilization  carried  to  a  higher  point  of  perfection  than  at  Thebes, 
Heliopolis,  Athens,  and  Kome?  And  does  not  the  traveler  to- 
day, when  visiting  the  scenes  of  these  ancient  seats  of  art,  see 
around  him  on  all  sides  nothing  but  ruins  of  former  greatness  ? 
"Why  did  they  fall  ?  The  plain  answer  is,  their  civilization  was 
material,  and,  being  only  material,  it  went  down  before  the 
rude  blows  of  time.  And  so  shall  it  be  with  every  nation 
that  builds  on  the  same  insecure  foundation.  A  thorough 
Christian  education  is  the  only  security  for  the  stability  of 
the  nation.  This  is  the  basis  on  which  all  the  peace,  happi- 
ness and  prosperity  of  the  individual,  the  family  and  the 
country  must  rest.  The  evil  education  of  a  child  is  one  of 
the  greatest  afflictions  that  could  be  visited  on  a  parent.  The 
story  told  of  Diouysius  the  Tyrant  will  serve  as  an  illustration  of 
this.  The  philosopher  Dion,  it  appears,  had  given  that  monarch 
mortal  offense  by  some  observation  or  other,  and  the  king  was 
determined  to  be  revenged  on  him.  He  could  have  slain  the 
philosopher,  but  he  did  worse.  He  took  his  son  and  entrusted 
him  to  an  infidel  teacher;  and  when  the  youth  had  learned  his 
lesson,  and  had  becomo  proficient  in  impiety,  he  sent  him  liack 
to  his  father,  that  he  might  be  a  source  of  sorrow  and  grief  to 
the  old  man  all  the  days  of  his  life.  The  moral  is  this,  that  bad 
children  are  the  greatest  affliction  a  parent  or  a  nation  can  sutler. 

Don't  say  that  this  reasoning  is  beside  the  question;  don't  say 
that  to  exclude  religion  from  the  schools  is  not  to  exclude  it  from 
the  country;  for,  as  "  the  child  is  the  father  of  the  man,"  if  you 
exclude  it  from  the  former,  you  will  inevitably  exclude  it  from 
the  latter.  'If  you  exclude  it  from  the  schools,  you  exclude  it 
from  society,  from  the  laws  and  from  the  country.  Are  you 
prepared  to'do  this?     You  will  not  surely  say  so;  for  the  most 


[19] 

'Sminent  and  enlightened  statesmen  would  be  against  you.  Let 
me  give  you  a  few  instances.  Guizot,  than  wliom  few  could  be 
regarded  as  better  authority  on  such  matters,  when  Minister  of 
Public  Instruction  in  France,  under  Louis  Philippe,  makes  this 
remarkable  admission:  "  In  order  to  make  popular  instruction 
truly  good  and  socially  useful,  it  must  be  fundamentalhj  reHgious." 
Mark  that.  "  I  do  not  simply  mean,"  continues  the  same  emi- 
nent authority,  "  that  religious  instruction  should  hold  its  place 
in  popular  education,  and  that  the  practice  of  religion  should 
enter  into  it;  for  a  nation  is  not  religiously  educated  by  such 
petty  mechanical  devices.  It  is  necessary  that  national  educa- 
tion [now,  sir,  note  this]  should  be  given  aiad  received  in  the 
midst  of  a  religious  atmosi^here,  and  that  religious  impressions 
and  religious  observances  should  penetrate  into  all  its  parts." 

Now,  could  any  priest,  bishop,  or  Pope  speak  stronger  than 
that  in  favor  of  religious  combined  with  secular  instruction  ? 
And  that  eminent  Protestant  Minister  of  Public  Instruction  was 
43nly  echoing  what  another  equally  eminent  and  enlightened 
minister  of  instruction  had  affirmed  before  him.  I  refer  to  Por- 
tallis,  who  acted  in  the  same  capacity  under  the  first  Napoleon. 
■"  There  is  no  instruction  [says  this  gentleman]  without  educa- 
tion, and  no  proper  education  without  morality  and  dogma.  We 
oniisl  take  religion  as  the  basis  of  educaiion;  and  if  we  compare 
what  the  instruction  of  the  present  day  is  with  what  it  ought  to 
Tbe,  we  can  not  help  deploring  the  lot  which  awaits  and  threatens 
the  present  and  future  generations."  Need  I  quote  any  more? 
Put  perhaps  it  may  be  useful  to  add  hereto  the  words  of  the 
rather  of  our  Country.  In  his  farewell  address  the  first  Presi- 
dent of  the  United  States,  the  immortal  Washington,  addressed 
the  following  never-to-be  forgotten  words  to  the  people  of  this 
country:  "  Of  all  the  dispositions  and  habits  which  lead  to 
political  prosjDerity,  religion  and  morality  are  indisjDensable  sup- 
ports. In  vain  would  that  man  claim  the  tribute  of  patriotism 
who  should  labor  to  subvert  these  great  pillars  of  human  happi- 
ness— these  firmest  props  of  the  duties  of  men  and  citizens." 
And  again  he  says:  "  Beware  of  the  man  who  attempts  to  incul- 
cate morality  withoat  religion."  And  jet,  in  the  face  of  that,  we 
have  men  calling  themselves  patriots,  true  American  citizens, 
]overs  of  their  country's  independence,  laboring  with  all  their 
might  and  main  to  support  a  system  of  secular  education,  which 
in  its  character  and  tendencies  is  most  admirably  fitted  for  pull- 
ing down  these  props  of  human  happiness. 

1  think  I  have  now  sufficiently  shown  that  we  Catholics  have 
abundant  reason  for  objecting  to  the  present  school  system. 
Do  not  reply  to  this  by  saying,  as  you  did  in  your  open  letter  of 
invitation  to  me,  that  we  seek  the  suppression  and  annihilation 
of  the  present  school  system.  We  do  nothing  of  the  kind,  and 
when  you  wrote  those  \vords  I  am  sure  you  did  noti  understand 
our  position,  for  I  feel  satisfied  that  you  are  too  upright  and 
lionoi-able  a  man  to  knowingly  and  willfully  do  us  a  wrong.    All 


[20  J 

wo  wjiiit,  nil  we  ask,  is  that  wc  be  not  fenced  into  accepting'  a 
8yfcit(!m  wliieh  we  know,  and  which  we  have  the  most  abundant 
evidence  at  hand  to  prove,  is  undermining  and  destroying  the 
the  faith  of  millions  of  our  children.  A  few  years  ago,  a 
Methodist  minister  openly  boasted  that  in  twelve  years  we  had 
lost,  through  the  agency  of  the  public  school,  as  njany  as  one 
million  nine  hundred  thousand  childrt'U  !  And  a  certain  Doctor 
Clark,  of  Albany,  asserted  that  mullllinlrs  Imd  yielded  to  the  in- 
fluence of  these  inslitutions.  In  fact,  there  are  statistics  to 
show  that  Ave  have  lost  in  this  way  the  enormous  number  of 
eighteen  millions  of  souls.  To  be  consistent  and  logical,  the 
advocates  of  the  system  should  freely  and  without  hesitation  ac- 
knowledge that  the  tendencies  and  workings  of  the  institution 
are  unquestionably  destructive  of  Catholicism.  Ihen  we  could 
readily  understand  our  opponents,  and  our  position  would  be 
properly  defined.  But  to  tell  us,  in  the  face  of  the  facts  that 
are  before  us,  that  the  public  school  system  is  not  injurious  to 
our  interests,  and  ought  to  be  approved  by  our  Church,  is  to  in- 
sult our  reason  and  to  treat  us  as  fools. 

Are  we  reasonable,  then,  in  asking  and  expecting  a  change? 
Put  yourself  in  our  place,  and  see  how  you  would  feel  and  act. 
If,  instead  of  being  in  the  majority,  you  Protestants  were  here 
in  the  minority,  and  we  inaugurated  a  system  of  education  which, 
from  experience,  was  shown  to  be  destructive  of  the  faith  of 
3'our  children,  how,  I  ask,  would  you  regard  such  a  system? 
\\  ould  you  consider  it  just,  fair  or  honorable?  ^Vould  you  ap- 
prove it  and  appreciate  it  ?  "Would  you  not  rather  condemn  it, 
stigmatize  it,  and  denounce  it  as  tyrannical  and  oppressive  in  the 
highest  degree.  And  now  may  1  not  here  aptly  adduce  the  old 
and  vulgar  truism,  "what  is  sauce  for  the  goose  ought  to  be 
sauce  for  the  gander.''  If  every  one  would  act  on  the  princi- 
ple, "do  unto  otheis  as  ycu  would  be  done  by,'"  there  would  be 
less  oppression,  less  bigotry,  less  intolerance  in  the  world.  It  is 
a  great  pity  that  men  don't  try  to  understand  each  other  better, 
"We  Catholics  are  not  the  persons  that  tome  would  make  us,  and 
that  many  eminent  Protestant  writers  represent  us.  I  have  often 
been  astonished  while  perusing  the  writings  of  such  men,  to  see 
the  amount  of  misapprehension  and  misconception  of  our  po- 
sition and  doctrines  that  exists  even  among  the  most  intelligent  and 
enlightened  of  the  Protestant  community.  I  have  encountered 
these  things  in  the  works  of  such  writers  as  Scott,  Macaulay, 
Disraeli,  Carlyle,  and  others.  In  fact,  such  is  the  cloud  of  preju- 
dice that  haiigsbefore  the  eyes  and  envelops  the  mind  of  our  non- 
Catholic  brethren  in  our  regard,  that  they  see  us  and  our  doctrines 
in  a  wholly  distorted  light.  They  take  us  and  cur  belief  for  some- 
thing that  we  are  not  and  that  it  is  not.  Take,  for  instance,  at 
randcm,  any  dozen  educated  Protestant  gentkmen  of  San  Fran- 
cisco, and  ask  them  what  the  following  simple  doctrinal  ques- 
tions mean,  and,  in  all  probability,  they  will  give  you  such  an- 
swers as  these:     AVhat  is  papal  infallibility?     "What  ai-e  indul- 


[21  ] 

gences?  The  first  means  that  the  Pope  can't  sin  or  can't  lie; 
and  the  second,  of  course,,  implies  a  license  to  sin,  or,  at  least,  a 
pardon  of  sin.  Now,  you  know  that  that  is  not  cori-ect — that  it  is 
not  what  Catholics  hold  on  these  points.  It  is  indeed  a  pity  that 
men  don't  try  to  understand  one  another  a  little  better,  and  to 
rid  themselves  of  that  odious  mental  delusion  called  prejudice. 
But  what  is  strange,  too,  in  this  respect,  is  that  the  very  men 
who  think,  and  say,  and  write  these  hard,  bitter,  unkind  and  cut- 
ting things  of  us  are  oftentimes,  in  their  social  capacity,  among 
the  kindest,  gentlest,  and  most  indulgent  of  persons — men  who 
■would  not  for  the  world  do  anyone  knowingly  and  willfully  a 
■wrong.  How  are  we  to  account  for  this  state  of  affairs  ?  Surely 
the  world  ought  to  have  outgrown  this  mental  weakness.  But 
yet  there  is  the  humiliating  fact  that  it  has  not;  and  in  view 
thereof,  we  can  readily  understand  how  the  first  Christians  got 
the  credit  of  being  the  worshipers  of  the  ass's  heads,  of  devour- 
ing infants,  and  yielding  themselves  to  the  most  lascivious  inter- 
<;ourse  in  their  religious  assemblies.  Ah!  life  is  too  short  to  be 
quarreling  about  creeds.  We  should  all  tr}'  to  be  liberal- 
minded,  whole-souled  and  unprejudiced  toward  others.  I  have 
lived  among  Turks  Jews,  Mohammedans  and  Idolators,  and  I 
rrankly  declare  that  their  forms  of  faith  have  never  embittered 
my  mind;  for  as  long  as  a  man  does  not  interfere  with  my  re- 
ligious Convictions,  he  may,  if  he  please,  believe  that  the  moon 
is  made  of  green  cheese. 

We  Catholics  are  not  the  persons  that  some  would  make  us. 
Our  holy  religion  forbids  us  to  bear  animosity  or  hatred  to  any 
one.  We  always  try  to  have  kindly  and  generous  ieelings  for 
all,  and  if  we  declaim  against  the  present  system  of  education 
which  is  forced  on  us,  it  is  because  our  faith  is  being  injux-ed. 
As  far  as  the  Protestant  community  is  concerned,  we  have  no  ob- 
jection in  life  that  it  should  retain  the  common  school  system  if  it 
think  well  of  it.  Our  object  is  not  to  pull  down,  nor  destroy, 
nor  annihilate,  as  we  get  credit  for  trying  to  do.  The  antagonism, 
then,  between  its  and  this  system  is  not  of  that  nature  of  w^hich 
you  spoke  when  3'ou  said,  in  your  open  letter  of  invitation  to  me, 
that  there  is  room  in  America  for  only  one  or  other  of  these  sys- 
tems— namely,  Catholicism  or  the  public  school  system.  This  is 
a  mistake,  a  great  mistake;  there  is  quite  room  enough  for  both 
without  any  clashing  of  interiest  within  the  limits  of  the  Re- 
public. Only  let  us  withdraw;  do  not  compel  us  to  send  our 
children  there  any  longer,  and  you  may  be  assured  of  it  that 
you  will  never  hear  a  word  from  anj'  among  us  against  the  sys- 
tem. We  will  let  time  prove  to  you  what  its  character  is,  and 
we  are  ready  to  abide  bj'  its  decision.  You  may  say:  We  don't 
force  you;  you  are  free  to  send  j'-our  children  or  not,  just  as  you 
please.  Are  you  really  serious?  You  don't,  indeed,  force  us  to 
this  at  the  jjoint  of  the  bayonet  or  the  mouth  of  the  cannon,  but 
you  do  force  us  in  a  hardly  less  effectual  manner,  by  taking  ad- 
■vantage  of  our  poverty  and  refusing  to  give  us  any  other  system 


[22  J 

of  instruction,  so  that  we  have  to  choose  between  leaving  our 
children  utterly  ifi^norant  or  accepting  what  yon  offer  iis.  In  fact, 
3'ou  act  toward  us  as  a  Turkish  oilicial  acted  toward  a  community 
of  Israelites  on  a  certain  occasion,  For  a  reason  best  known  to 
himself,  but  certainly  not  from  any  liberal  motive,  he  made  the 
children  of  Abraham  i)urchase  a  certain  quantity  of  pork.  lu 
vain  they  protested  that  they  had  no  use  for  it,  that  it  was  not 
suitable  to  them,  and  that  their  religion  forbade  them  to  use  it; 
but  purchase  it  they  had  to.  Now,  sir,  the  ])ublic  schools  of  this 
country  are  the  chunks  of  swines'  flesh  that  the  authorities 
throw  us  Catholics.  Vainly  do  we  protest  that  we  do  not  want 
this  nauseous  stuiT,  that  it  does  not  agree  with  us,  and  that  it  makes 
us  sick  at  heart.  But  the  only  reply  we  get  is  that  curt  and 
surly  one:  "  Take  it  or  go  without;  that's  all  you'll  get."  It  is 
certainly  hard  to  see  how  this  is  consistent  with  the  spirit  of  lib- 
erty and  freedom  that  is  .supposed  to  exist  in  this  country. 

The  present  system  of  common  school  education,  then,  as  es- 
tablished in  this  land,  is  plainly  contrary  to  the  spirit  of  the 
constitution  of  our  nation;  for  does  not  that  document  say  that 
"  no  human  authority  can  control  or  interfere  with  the  rights  of 
conscience"?  And  if  it  be  not  an  interference  with  the  rights 
of  conscience  to  compel  six  or  more  millions  of  people  to  pay 
for  and  maintain  a  system  of  education  which  they  loudly  pro- 
claim and  prove  to  be  hostile  and  dangerous  to  the  faith  and 
morals  of  their  children,  I  don't  know  what  interference  with 
conscience  can  mean. 

But  you  may  say  to  me:  If  the  system  be  what  you  say,  how 
can  you  conscientiously  avail  j'ourselves  of  it  at  all  ? — are  you 
not  in  doing  so  traitors  to  your  own  consciences '?  Not  exacth". 
There  are  many  things  that  circumstances  will  justify,  which, 
without  them,  would  be  condemnatory.  A  man,  for  instance,  is 
justified  in  risking  his  life  to  save  another,  whereas  to  expose 
himself  to  such  peril  without  any  such  cause  would  be  exceed- 
ingly criminal.  If  we  send  our  little  ones  to  the  public  schools, 
this  only  proves  in  what  estimation  we  hold  education  when  we 
are  ready  even  to  expose  their  eternal  salvation  for  its  attain- 
ment. Would,  indeed,  that  all  liberal  and  enlightened  Protes- 
tants would  take  the  same  calm  and  impartial  view  of  this  mat- 
ter that  Judge  Taft,  of  Ohio,  did  some  years  ago,  when,  treating 
on  the  aftair,  he  said:  "These  Catholics  (paying  their  propor- 
tion of  the  taxes)  are  constrained  every  year,  on  conscientious 
grounds,  to  yield  to  others  their  right  to  one-third  of  the  school 
money,  a  sura  averaging  at  the  present  time  about  two  hundred 
thousand  dollars  every  year.  That  is  to  say,  these  people  are 
pimiftJied  every  year  for  believing  as  they  do,  to  the  extent  of 
two  hundred  thousand  dollars;  and  to  that  extent  those  of  us 
who  send  our  children  to  these  excellent  common  schools  become 
beneficiaries  of  the  Catholic  money.  "What  a  shame  for  Protes- 
tants to  have  their  children  educated  by  money  robbed  from. 
Catholics  !  ' 


[23] 

Judge  Taft  was  speaking  only  of  his  own  State  when  he  sdicl 
that  the  Catholics  were  punished  to  the  extent  of  two  hun- 
dred thousand  dollars  a  year.  How,  heavy  then,  is  not  the  pun- 
ishment with  which  the  Catholics  of  the  whole  country  are  visited 
annually  !  Just  for  a  moment  look  at  the  workings  of  this 
system  in  my  individual  case.  There  is  in  this  parish  of  Brook- 
lyn only  a  very  small  Catholic  population;  wejiumber  hardly  one 
in  five  of  the  Protestants  of  all  denominations.  All  told,  we 
are  not  more  than  about  eight  hundred  persons,  young  and  old; 
and  I  need  hardly  tell  you  that  we  are  not  among  the  richest  of 
the  community.  Well,  sir,  how  do  we  stand  in  respect  to  the 
public  schools?  This  is  our  position:  believing  as  we  do,  that 
we  could  not  conscientiously  avail  oui'selves  of  the  system  of 
which  I  speak,  we  vigorously  went  to  work  and  erected  educa- 
tional establishments  for  our  boys  and  girls,  at  the  cost  of  tifteen 
thousand  dollars,  which,  for  us,  was  a  considerable  amount,  but 
trifling  in  comparison  to  the  drain  upon  us  to  sujDport  these 
schools.  We  have,  under  instruction,  over  two  hundred  child- 
dren,  and  thereby  save  the  State  about  four  thousand  dollars  an- 
nually, for  if  these  children  were  not  with  us  they  would  have 
to  be  educated  by  the  State.  Now,  sir,  do  we  get  any  credit  for 
this  ?  Far  from  it.  We  have  to  pay  our  taxes  as  usual  for  the 
support  of  these  schools  that  we  don't  use.  Not  only  that,  but 
we  are  taxed  for  our  own  schools,  that  are  saving  so  mvich  to 
the  State.  Now,  I  put  it  to  you  as  an  honest,  honorable  man, 
is  that  a  fair  and  equitable  system? 

Well,  but  3'ou  may  say:  What  can  we  do  to  accommodate 
you  ?  You  surely  don't  expect  us  to  go  and  build  separate  estab- 
lishments for  3^ou  Catholics.  You  don't  expect  us  to  pull  down 
these  institutions  which  we  have  raised  at  such  cost,  and  in  which 
we  have  such  faith.  Most  assuredly  this  is  not  our  demand  nor  de- 
sire; we  are  not  so  unreasonable.  We  are  ready  to  meet  you 
more  than  half  way  in  the  settlement  of  this  important  matter. 
We  will  go  this  far;  we  will  put  up  the  schools  we  need,  and 
will  furnish  them  in  a  manner  to  suit  you  at  our  own  expense. 
The  teachers  we  require  we  will  take  from  those  you  have  already 
appointed,  in  every  instance  where  they  are  of  our  own  faith; 
and  if  we  can  not  find  the  necessary  number  in  this  way,  we  will 
present  to  your  boards  candidates  for  the  position  of  teacher,  so 
that  you  may  have  an  assurance  that  the  instructors  in  our 
schools  have  the  necessary  qualifications.  Furthermore,  we  will 
willingly  allow  your  inspectors  to  examine  our  pupils  to  see  that 
they  are  prcficieut  in  their  studies.  In  a  word,  we  will  give  you 
all  that  you  are  getting  now,  and  a  great  deal  more — that  is, 
moral  training,  together  with  secular  instruction.  And  for  all 
this  we  only  ask  what  you  are  paying  under  the  present  system. 
Again,  I  ask,  what  is  there  unfair  in  that  ?  Does  not  that  system 
prevail  in  England,  Ireland  and  Scotland?  Does  it  not  jjrevail 
in  Upper  and  Lower  Canada  ?  Does  it  not  even  prevail  in  a 
part  of  this  country — namely,  in  Richmond  County,  Georgia? 


[24] 

Aiul   if  it  has  been  found  to  work  admirably  in    tliose  ])lace8, 
Avliy  not  here? 

A  great  deal  more  might  be  said  on  thiH  very  imp  rtant  sub- 
joct;  it  is  by  no  means  exhausted;  but,  for  tlie  present.  I  feel  I 
Nvoiihl  be  trespassing  too  mucli  on  your  spuco  were  I  to  continue 
any  longer. 

In  conclusion,  I  hope  that  you  will  weigh  carefully  and  atten- 
tively the  arguments  that  I  have  advanced,  and  that  you  will  not 
allow  either  passion  or  prejudic-e  to  interfere  with  you  in  the 
repl}'  that  you  are  exi^ectod  to  give. 

Bear  in  mind  that  my  position  is  this:  First,  that  the  govern- 
ment of  the  country  has  no  right  to  step  in  between  the  parent 
and  child,  and  to  assume,  in  regard  to  the  latter,  the  obligations 
which  the  Almighty  imposed  on  the  former.  Secondly,  that  we 
Catholics  are  losing  immensely  by  this  system,  and,  conse- 
quently, that  it  is  entirely  unfair  to  force  us  to  accept  it,  in- 
asmuch as  it  is  striking  at  the  root  of  our  church.  And,  thirdly, 
do  not  forget  that  m}'  position  maintains  that  without  the  incul- 
cation of  religion  in  the  schools  you  can  not  have  a  people  thor- 
oughly Christian. 

W.  GLEESOX, 
Kector  of  St.  Anthony's  Church,  Brooklyn. 


[From  the  Argonaut,  March  10,  1883.] 

"Semper  eadem"  is  the  proud  and  not  unfounded  boast  of 
the  Church  of  Rome.  It  has  never  given  its  assent  to  any  de- 
feat that  it  has  met  from  any  other  hand  than  that  of  science. 
To  some  of  the  unquestioned  demonstrations  of  science  it  has 
yielded- -yielded  to  the  inevitable;  and  never  then  except  when 
to  surrender  a  part  enabled  the  Church  to  save  the  remainder. 
There  are  many  reasons  why  Father  Gleeson  and  the  Argonaut 
should  not  engage  in  an  unprofitable  discussion  over  our  com- 
mon schools:  First,  because  it  is  unprofitable.  Father  Gleeson 
will  never  be  convinced  that  the  Roman  Catholic  Church  is  not 
of  infinitely  more  importance  to  the  world  and  hiimanity,  to 
America  and  its  institutions,  to  California  and  its  citizens,  to  the 
moral  and  spiritual  well-being  of  our  boys  and  girls,  and  to  their 
temporal  interests  in  this  world,  and  their  eternal  welfare  in  the 
world  to  come,  than  the  free  common  schools,  or  any  schjols,  or 
any  education  other  than  religious.  The  Argonaut  does  not  be- 
lieve that  the  Roman  Catholic  Church  has  accomplished  as  much 
good  as  evil  m  its  past  history.  The  world  would  have  been 
much  better  off  if  it  had  never  existed,  and  humanity  would 
have  been  spared  all  sorts  of  misfortunes,  persecutions  and 
tvrannies.  The  human  race  would  have  escaped  the  hon-ors  of 
many   wars,  the  stripes  of  many  rods,  and  the  heat   of  many 


[25] 

fagots;  it  would  have  heard  less  clanking  of  chains  binding  men 
in  dungetms,  less  groans  of  bursting  hearts,  less  outcry  from 
torture  of  inquisitorial  rack,  boot  or  thumb-screw.  Science 
would  have  been  more  advanced,  and  there  would  be  less  of  in- 
tolerance, bigotry  and  ignorance  in  the  world  to-day,  if  the 
Apostolic  Roman  Church  had  never  been  organized.  In  com- 
j)arison  with  this  ancient  and  illustrious  Church,  with  its  con- 
spicuous achievements  of  more  than  ten  centuries  of  recognized 
■existence,  its  pompaous  ceremonials,,  and  its  arrogant  preten- 
sions of  divine  origin,  we  contrast  our  American  system  of  free 
schools  and  of  liberal  education,  where  no  creed  finds  place  and 
210  priest  finds  opportunity,  as  much  the  grander  and  more 
beneficent  institution  of  the  two.  If  either  is  from  Grod  and 
planted  by  a  divine  intelligence,  it  is  the  school.  If  there  is  in 
all  this  world  an  enduring  rock,  it  is  the  corer-stone  of  the  free 
school-house.  If  there  is  a  hell,  and  hell  has  gates,  and  if  these 
bronze  barriers  of  the  damned  ever  come  forth  for  conflict,  the 
only  thing  in  this  world  that  they  will  not  preval  against  is  the 
non-sectarian  school-house,  where  are  laid,  broad  and  deep,  the 
foundations  of  a  learning  so  liberal  that  it  may  dare  to  doubt, 
inquire,  investigate,  and  act. 


The  Argonaut  has  no  sort  of  confidence  that  it  can  bring 
Father  Gleeson  around  to  think  in  his  way,  and  the  Argonaut  is 
quite  sure  it  will  never  be  convinced  that  the  Roman  Church 
is  of  divine  authority;  that  its  head  is  the  vicegerent  of  God; 
that  he  carries  the  keys;  that  he  is,  by  virtue  of  his  spiritual 
office,  the  superior  of  all  in  civil  authorit}';  that  he  is  infallible 
or  impeccable;  that  he  has  any  authority  in  America,  or  an}' 
right  to  exercise  any  authority  or  influence  in  the  making  or 
execution  of  our  laws;  that  he  or  his  subordinates  in  spiritual 
employment  have  any  right  to  interfere  in  our  schools,  or  that 
any  of  the  doctrines  or  dogmas  of  the  Church  of  Rome  have  any 
right  to  be  taught  therein.  This  controvery  is  the  more  unprofit- 
able because  it  has  been  fought  over  and  over  again  in  this 
country,  in  nearly,  all  of  the  States,  and  the  church  has  always 
been  defeated.  The  real  point  at  issue  is  to  secure  such  a  dis- 
tribution of  school  moneys  as  will  secure  Catholic  schools,  with 
Catholic  teachers,  where  Catholic  pupils  can  be  taught  the 
Catholic  religion,  or,  as  Father  Gleeson  expresses  it, 

"  We  will  go  this  far:  we  will  put  up  the  schools  we  need  and  will  hu'uish 
them;  the  teachers  we  require  wd  will  take  from  those  you  have  already  ap- 
pointed. *  *  "  We  will  allow  your  directors  to  examine  our  pupils  to  see 
that  they  are  proficient  in  their  studies.  In  a  word,  we  will  give  you  all  that 
you  are  g>:>ttiuj^  now  and  a  gr^-at  deal  more — that  is,  moral  training,  together 
with  secular  instruction.  And  for  all  this  we  only  ask  what  you  are  paying 
tinder  the  present  system." 

Native  of  New  York,  we  know  more  abaut  this  controversy 
there  than  elsewhere.  From  the  first  planting  of  the  germ  of 
the  free-school  system  in  New  York,  and  before  the  century 


r  '-^(5  J 

be{,'aii,  the  rolij^'ious  cou'^rci^iduniH  dcniaiiilod  a  division  of  the 
public  nioiioy  in  aid  of  tlioir  Chiin;h  scliools.  In  Ntnv  York,  the 
Baptists,  and  not  the  Catholics,  were  the  first  to  make  this  claim. 
About  the  year  1825,  the  Catholics  had  become  a  political  power 
in  New  York,  when  the  authority  of  that  Church  asserted  its 
claim  to  a  division  of  school  money.  In  1840,  this  controversy 
culminated  in  a  splendid  debate  before  the  Common  Council 
of  the  City  of  New  York,  in  which  Bishop  Hu^dies,  Theodore 
Sedgwick,  Hiram  Ketchum,  Doctor  Bond,  the  Reverend  John 
Knox,  Nathan  Bangs,  and  the  Reverend  (Jardiner  Spring  took 
part.  It  was  carried  into  politics,  and  involved  Governor 
Seward  and  the  Honorable  John  C.  Spencer,  Secretary  of  State 
for  the  United  States,  in  its  discussion.  It  tigured  in  the  State 
Legislature,  and  became  the  subject  of  animated  public  discus- 
sion. Petitions,  memorials,  remonstrances,  and  protests  were 
thick  as  leaves.  Catholics  and  Protestants  help  public  meet- 
ings— the  one  to  express  disapprobation,  and  the  other  to  uphold 
the  public-school  system.  The  question  was  carried  to  the 
Legislature,  and  in  the  City  of  New  York  the  Catholics  ran  a 
legislative  ticket.  In  Carroll  Hall,  Bishop  Hughes  made  a  re- 
markable speech  in  answer  to  Hiram  Ketchum,  which  occupied 
three  evenings  in  delivery.  This  subject  was  then  ably,  elo- 
quently and  exhaustively  considered.  It  was  settled — and,  for 
the  United  States  of  America,  definitely  settled — till  the  time 
shall  come,  if  ever,  when  the  Roman  Catholic  Church  in  America 
has  the  power  and  the  opportunity  to  unsettle  all  that  American 
republicans  hold  sacred  and  inviolate. 


The  Argonaut  concedes  that,  while  it  is  the  privilege  of  the 
Church  to  teach  religion  and  morality,  dogmas  and  doctrines,  it 
is  the  duty  of  the  State  to  instruct  in  those  branches  of  educa- 
tion which  lit  boys  and  girls  to  become  bread-getters  in  the 
struggle  of  life,  and  properly  to  discharge  the  res})onsible  duties 
of  citizenship.  •  The  school  does  not  interfere  with  the  church 
nor  come  between  the  parent  and  the  priest.  The  school  de- 
mands but  six  hours  out  of  twenty  four,  live  daj's  out  of  seven, 
it  has  but  ten  months  out  of  twelve,  and  it  averages  less  than 
seven  years  out  of  the  allotted  seventy.  It  gives  the  parent  and 
spiritual  guide  all  the  rest  of  the  time  from  the  cradle  to  the 
grave.  We  do  not  admit  that,  by  the  exclusion  of  sectarian 
teaching  from  the  schools,  they  necessarily  become  godless. 
"Experience,"  says  Father  Gleeson,  "has  demonstrated  the 
evils  resulting  from  a  development  of  the  mental  to  the  exclu- 
sion of  the  moral  faculties."  The  statement  is  at  best  a  plati- 
tude, and  demands  proof.  It  is  not  applicable  to  our  educa- 
tional system,  because  it  does  develop  the  moral  faculties;  and, 
if  this  assertion  means  that  the  kind"  of  education  provided  by 
the  Catholic  Church,  and  in  Catholic  countries,  by  Catholic  mas- 
ters, priests,  or  nuns,  is  better  in  results  than  a  non-sectarian 


[27  ] 

education  under  the  American  system,  we  deny  it.  We  declare 
that  the  world  is  better,  and  its  morals  purer;  that  it  enjoys 
more  freedom  of  conscience  and  greater  liberty  of  intellectual 
devoloj^ment;  that  it  has  attained  a  higher  scientific  position; 
that  it  has  more  bread  to  eat  and  clothes  to  wear;  that  less  men 
are  persecuted  for  conscience  sake,  less  are  killed  in  battle  or 
have  become  the  slaves  of  social  and  political  conditions;  that 
there  is  less  governmental  tj-ranny,  less  of  religious  intolerance, 
less  of  ignorance  and  bigotry,  and  less  of  crime  and  poverty, 
since  the  civilized  nations  have  begun  to  emancipate  themselves 
from  the  teachings  of  the  Eoman  Catholic  Church.  Nor  do 
we  admit  that  the  young  men  aud  women  who  graduate  at  our 
public  schools  are  either  godless  or  immoral.  We  claim  that,  in 
these  respects,  and  in  the  possession  of  all  the  qualities  which 
go  to  the  make-up  of  intelligent  and  honorable  men,  and  culti- 
vated and  virtuous  women,  they  are  equal,  if  not  superior,  to  the 
men  and  women  who,  in  childhood,  have  been  educated  in 
sectarian  schools,  or  who,  in  youth,  have  been  molded  by  the 
hand  of  priest  or  nun.  We  see  no  philosophy  in  turning  boys 
over  to  the  mauijDulation  of  childless  priests,  or  putting  girls 
under  the  control  of  women  to  whom  the  womanly  instinct 
of  love  and  maternity  is  forbidden  as  a  sin.  We  declare 
that  in  America  there  are  no  Catholic  schools  at  all  comparable 
with  our  free-school  system;  that  Jesuit  priest  and  Christian 
brother,  hooded  nun  and  lay  sister,  are  not,  in  general  culture, 
in  practical  sense,  in  honorable  deportment,  in  virtuous  lives,  in 
moral  excellence,  in  imitative  example,  or  healthful  influence,  in 
any  respect  superior  to  the  gentlemen  and  ladies  who  teach  in 
our  public  schools.  AVith  indignant  contempt  we  deny  the  vile 
slander  so  often  and  so  covertly  insinuated  from  Eoman  pulpit 
and  Catholic  journal,  that  the  young  women  of  our  public 
schools,  our  female  seminaries,  and  our  institutions  of  Protes- 
tant or  liberal  learning,  are  not  equal  in  virtue  and  dignity  of 
womanly  pride,  to  the  graduates  of  parochial  or  convent  schools. 
It  is  not  from  the  dormitory  or  play-ground  of  monastery  or 
nunnery  that  the  most  honorable  of  men  or  the  most  exemplary 
of  women  are  produced.  It  is  from  the  tree,  common  and  non- 
sectarian  schools  of  America  that  the  best  American  citizens, 
both  men  and  women,  come.  We  state  this  proposition  from 
our  reading  of  history,  our  observation  in  foreign  travel,  and  the 
familiar  statistics  of  our  criminal  and  eleemosynary  institutions. 
That  the  Bible,  which  is  claimed  to  be  the  fountain-head  and 
source  of  all  moral  instruction,  is  not  to-day  read  in  our  schools, 
is  chargeable  to  the  efforts  of  the  Eoman  clergy  who  caused  it  to 
be  excluded.  No  one  opposed  its  use  more  earnestly  than 
Bishop  Hughes  of  New  York.  We  need  not  discuss  the  ques- 
tion why  it  was  excluded.  We  further  deny  that  our  school 
system  does  not  teach  morality.  Our  children  are  taught  the 
underlying  principles  of  justice  and  charity,  and  that  it  is  wrong 
to  lie,  or  steal,  or  bear  false  testimony.     It  teaches  the  laws  of 


[28] 

chastity,  temperance,  and  moderation  in  sensual  induljjence, 
tlu'Ou;>'li  the  laws  of  health,  nature  and  physiology.  It  teaches 
honor  to  men  and  virtue  to  women.  It  instructs  in  the  hi;,'he8t 
code  of  morals  when  it  teaclies  the  ri;2;hts  of  personal  liljerty, 
the  freedom  of  conscience,  tlie  protection  of  property,  the  in- 
violability of  domicile,  obedience  to  the  law,  respect  for  courts 
and  maj^istrates,  and  the  duties  of  citizenship.  The  criminal 
and  civil  codes  are  lessons  in  morals.  The  discipline  of  the 
school  room  is  a  moral  lesson  which  teaches  obligation  to  uj)hold 
and  maintain  order  in  society,  and  that  it  is  the  duty  of  all  to 
obey  the  law.  This  is  the  only  kind  of  education  that  the  State 
is  interested  in,  and  the  only  kind  it  feels  authorized  to  provide. 
AVe  believe  that  to  grant  the  demand  of  the  Church  for  partici- 
pation in  our  system  of  education,  would  be  to  broaden  the 
foundation  of  an  ecclesiastical  establishment  which  is  now  en- 
gaged in  educating  men  and  women  to  iinrepublican  principles, 
to  beliefs  which  do  not  recognize  the  law,  the  magistrates,  and 
the  courts  of  the  country  as  its  highest  authority;  and  which 
would,  in  time,  bring  about  a  connection  between  Cliurch  and 
State  which  would  have  for  its  ultimate  object  the  subversion 
of  the  State  and  the  supremac}'  of  the  Church,  and  would  at- 
tempt to  bring  the  Government  in  subordination  to  tbe  ecclesias- 
tical power  of  the  Church  of  Rome.  "We  believe  that  a  division 
of  our  school  moneys,  and  their  appropriation  to  parochial  or 
other  ecclesiastical,  denominational,  or  sectarian  schools,  would 
destro}'  the  unity,  efficiency  and  usefulness  of  our  present  most 
admirable  system,  and  set  up  a  class  of  schools  which  would 
tend  to  encourage  race  and  class  distinctions,  and  raise  a  crop  of 
petty  and  contentious  theological  institutions,  with  narrow-mind- 
ed bigots  and  pedants  for  teachers.  If  Bible-reading  is  so  indis- 
pensable to  moral  teaching,  and  morality  is  impossible  without 
religious  convictions,  it  may  be  well  to  remind  our  opponent  in 
this  discussion  that  the  Bible  was  excluded  from  the  schools  at 
the  instance  of  his  Church,  and  that  its  presence  could  not  be 
endured,  even' if  read  without  note  or  comment.  Bible-reading, 
except  under  interpretation  of  priest  or  canonical  teacher,  is 
not,  we  believe,  generally  encouraged;  nor  as  a  rule  is  the 
sacred  volume  regarded  as  safe  in  the  hands  of  youth.  In  fact, 
the  Church  of  Kome  objects  to  the  use  in  our  public  schools  of 
very  many  of  the  historical  narratives  of  the  last  ten  centuries, 
because  on  every  page  of  impartial  history  is  recorded — some- 
times in  blood — the  crimes  which  it  has  perpetrated  to  secure 
for  itself  political  and  dynastic  power.  Its  history  is  a  history 
of  aggressions,  violence,  criminal  deplomacy,  and  unscrupulous 
use  and  abuse  of  power,  in  assertion  of  the  political  supremacy 
of  its  spiritual  head.  The  papal  power  has  arrogated  to  itself 
not  only  the  right  to  govern  men's  conscience  and  to  demand 
unqualitied  submission  to  its  opinions,  but  to  exact  from  all 
countries  and  all  men  an  obedience  to  the  Pope  in  all  matters 
of  civil  and  governmental  power.     These  claims  the  American 


[29] 

people  reject  as  arrogant  aud  presumptuous.  They  resent  their 
assertion,  and,  so  long  as  the  Roman  Church  puts  them  forth, 
our  Government  and  its  people  must  be  the  enemy  of  the  Church. 
These  questions  of  civil  power  and  of  the  exercise  of  civil 
authority  are  so  interwoven  and  entangled  with  religious  and 
spiritual  cpiestions,  that  it  is  impossible  to  teach  the  one  with- 
out the  other.  It  would  be  impossible  for  the  clerical  mind  ta 
keep  them  apart.  When  spiritual  and  civil  problems  get  mixed 
— Rome  being  the  teacher — the  spiritual  comes  to  the  top. 
Whenever  the  American  school-house  shall  be  turned  over  to  the 
Roman  Catholic  teacher,  under  the  direction  of  the  Roman 
Catholic  Church,  American  youth  will  be  taught  the  civil  su- 
premacy of  a  spiritual  ]^:ower  as  the  first  and  fundamental  axiom 
of  governmenf. 


Holding  these  views,  the  Reverend  Father  Gleeson  will  hardly 
expect  the  Argonaut  to  sympathize  with  him,  because  the  Church 
of  Rome  has  in  America,  and  within  half  a  century,  lost  eigh- 
teen millions  of  its  precious  souls  who  have  wandered  from"  the 
faith,  and  now  are  sailing  down  the  great,  broad  educational 
current,  which,  taking  its  source  in  the  American  school-house, 
finds  its  way  to  the  great  ocean  of  liberal  thought,  whose  restless- 
weaves  are  ever  beating  and  surging  against  the  iron-bound 
shores  of  religious  intolerance,  bigotry,  and  ignorance.  In  the 
face  of  this  admission,  it  is  not  necessary  to  question  the  truth 
of  the  Bishop  of  Rochester's  assertion  that  Protestantism  is  in 
its  decadence,  or  of  Doctor  Ferdinand  Ewer,  that  it  is  a  failure;, 
for,  if  in  half  a  century  the  free  school  house,  the  free  press,  and 
laws  which,  favoring  no  religion,  protect  all,  can  in  our  country 
extort  the  admission  of  the  loss  of  eighteen  millions  and  the 
preservation  of  only  six  millions,  we  can  fold  our  hands,  and 
bide  our  time  when  this  splendid  ecclesiastical  fabric  shall,  in 
spite  of  Macaulay's  prophecy  or  priestly  interpretation  of  apos- 
tolic utterance,  disappear  from  the  face  of  the  earth.  "We  can 
afiord,  when  an  occasional  Tom  Noddy  of  an  English  lord  or  a 
society  woman  of  San  Francisco  takes  the  sacrament,  to  patient- 
ly enclure  the  clerical  rooster  as  he  crows  over  an  accession  to 
Rome,  and  we  may  console  our  unregenerate  souls  when  Ave  con- 
template the  emancipation  of  so  many  men  and  women  irom 
their  loyalty  to  a  power  which,  in  self-  preservation  and  self-de- 
fense, finds  it  necessary  to  attempt  to  destroy  the  free  schools  of 
America.  The  cause  of  this  defection  and  loss  of  eighteen  mil- 
lions is  not  that  the  schools  have  omitted  to  teach  religion.  The 
cause  is  a  secondary  one.  This  flight  of  millions  from  the 
Church  of  Rome  in  America — the  same  causes  are  operating 
over  all  the  European  world — is  because  our  boys  and  girls  have 
been  taught  to  read  and  think  for  themselves,  and  have^  been 
permitted  to  act  in  obedience  to  their  own  convictions,  and  by 
the  law  protected  therein.     Our  schools  have  so  emancipated 


[30] 

them  that  when  the}'  become  men  and  women  they  have  the 
moral  courage  to  think  for  themselves,  defy  the  thunders  of  the 
Church,  des]nte  its  threats  of  eternal  torture,  and  laugh  at  the 
spiritual  pretentious  of  what  they  could  not  fail  to  observe  was 
an  organized  industry  for  earning  money  and  securing  power. 
The  Church  of  Home  waited  ten  centuries  to  have  it  demonstrated 
— in  America — that  it  could  not  survive  a  ])eaceful  and  fair  con- 
test with  a  free  school-house,  from  which  the  i)riest  and  his  re- 
ligious teachings  should  be  excluded.  We  thank  you,  Father 
Gleeson,  for  your  frank  admission  that  you  "are  losing  im- 
mensely by  the  school  system;"  and  we,  in  turn,  will  be  frank  as 
you:  The  Argonaut,  "without  hesitation,  acknowledges  that 
"  the  tendencies  and  workings  of  the  common-school  system  are 
"unquestionably  destructive  of  Catholicism."  We  confess  this 
in  the  very  language  you  provide  us,  and  we  admit  that  it  is  this 
idea  that  which  makes  us  overlook  its  man}-  imperfections,  and 
which  prompts  us  to  declare  that  it  is  the  one  institution  which 
Americans  most  cherish,  and  in  defense  of  which  they  would 
most  freely  imperil  their  lives.  They  hold  it  as  most  sacred, 
and  look  to  it  as  the  most  impregnable  of  their  defenses,  in  pre- 
servation of  the  free  institutions,  laws,  and  liberties  of  the  re- 
publican government  under  which  they  live.  The  Church  of 
Rome  as  at  present  constituted  (and  it  will  not  change — it  is 
sempsr  eadem)  can  not  live  in  the  presence  of  liberal  thought. 
It  can  not  survive  within  the  shadow  of  free  schools,  a  free  press, 
and  a  government  which  will  give  it  no  favors  not  conceded  to 
Turk,  infidel,  Mohammedan,  or  Jew. 


Father  Gleeson's  Rejoinder. 


The   Editor's  Inconsistency  on  the  Subject  Shown  up. 


Beooklyn,  March  15th. 

Editor  Post:  I  would  feel  very  grateful  to  you  to  allow  this 
and  the  accompanying  letter  to  appear  in  the  Saturday  edition  of 
your  paper.  The  letter  was  intended  for  the  Argonaitt,  but  Mr. 
Pisley  could  not  make  it  convenient  to  give  it  insertion  in  this 
■week's  issue  of  his  journal,  and,  as  I  do  not  care  to  throw  the 
matter  back,  I  have  recourse  to  this  method  of  disposing  of  it. 
In  an  interview  I  had  with  Mr.  Pixley  yesterday,  in  his  office,  he 
declared  that  he  did  not  invite  me  to  the  discussion  of  the 
school  question  at  all,  but  only  to  one  phase  of  it — namely,  its 
morality.  In  answer  to  that,  I  refer  the  gentleman  to  the  words 
of  his  challenge,  as  made  to  me  in  his  open  letter  of  February 
17th,  in  which  the  following  sentence  is  to  be  found: 

"  I  shall  be  glad  if  I  can  find  by  your  admissions  some  com- 
mon starting  point/or  the  discussion  of  the  school  question." 

Since  my  last  interview  with  Mr.  Pixley,  I  have  come  to  under- 
stand his  real  position.  Hitherto,  I  was  alwa3's  under  the  im- 
ypression  that  I  had  to  deal  with  a  Christian  man.  but  Mr.  Pixley 
<>'^has  frankly  aoowoi'od  to  me  that  he  is  not  a  Christian,  but  an 
infidel.  He  does  not,  he  saj^s,  believe  in  the  existence  of  God 
or  of  the  soul.  This,  of  course,  fully  explains  why  the  gentle- 
man does  not  want  any  religions  instruction  in  connection  with 
the  education  of  the  j'outh  of  this  country.  And  the  simple 
reason  is  because  it  would  be  most  damaging  to  his  principles. 
Por  there  is  no  greater  barrier  against  infidelity  than  proper  re- 
ligious training.  In  reality,  then,  though  perhaps  the  gentle- 
man does  not  see  it,  he  is  an  intolerant  sectary,  for  he  wants  all 
sects  to  yield  up  their  rights  to  him,  so  that  his  infidel  prin- 
ples  may  be  advanced.  Of  course,  no  one  has  any  right  to 
blame  Mr.  Pixley  for  being  an  infidel,  if  he  thinks  it  best  to  be 
such;  but  what  seems  to  me  strange  is  that  he  hasn't  the 
courage  and  manhood  and  independence  to  come  out  boldly  be- 
fore the  community  and  openly  declare  his  infidel  principles. 
I  have  very  little  respect  for  a  man  who  shoots  from  behind  a 
hedge.  I  always  admire  a  frank  and  independent  opponent, 
while  on  the  other  hand,  I  do  not  think  much  of  the  man  Avho, 
■with  the  mask  of  Protestantism,  is  infidel  at  heart,  and,  though 
writing  ostensibly  as  a  Christian,  is  yet  all  the  while  seeking  to 
indoctrinate  others  with  his  infidel  notions. 


[  :^^  J 

Mr.  Pixley  said  to  me  in  his  open  letter  tbat  he  had  "  no  re- 
spect for  the  valor  of  any  i)art  of  Acliilles  but  his  heel."  I  am 
perfectly  in  accord  with  him  in  that.  I  always  like  a  man  to 
show  himself,  and  to  stand  by  his  colors.  He  also  said  to  me 
that  he  found  the  dialecticians  of  my  Church  "just  the  least 
hit  slippery. '  The  public  can  now  judge  who  is  the  slipperier 
character,  Mr.  Pixley  or  myself. 

In  short,  the  <>;entleman  wants  us  all,  Catholics  and  Protes- 
tants, to  sail  with  him  in  the  same  infidel  boat,  thinking,',  no 
doubt,  that  we  would  be  safer  there  than  el.sewhere.  But  what- 
ever others  may  think  on  the  matter,  I  must  frankly  acknowl- 
edge that  I  consider  Mr.  Frank  Pixley's  infidel  craft  a  very  un- 
seaworthy  vessel,  and  one  of  which  I  would  not  like  to  intrust 
himself. 

I  am,  sir,  yours  truly, 

W.  Gleeson. 


Editor  Aegonaut:  It  is  always  understood,  when  a  gentleman 
challenges  another  to  a  discussion  on  any  subject,  social,  moral, 
political  or  otherwise,  as  the  case  may  be,  that  he  is  prepared  to  en- 
ter on  the  same.  This  is  why  I  was  much  surprised  on  reading 
your  reply  to  my  letter,  which  appeared  in  your  issue  of  the  3d, 
to  see  in  the  very  second  paragraph  the  following  sentence: 
"  There  are  many  reasons  why  Father  Gleeson  and  the  Aryonaut 
should  not  engage  in  an  unprofitable  discussion  over  our  com- 
mon schools."  And  the  reason  you  assign  for  this  is  "  because 
it  is  unprofitable."  To  some  minds  this  would  not  seem  a 
reason  at  all,  for  a  reason  is  a  proof;  and  to  say  that  a  thing  is 
so,  because  it  is  so,  is  no  proof.  Further  on  in  your  editorial  you 
say  that  "this  controversy  is  the  more  unprofitable  because  it 
has  been  fought  over  and  over  again  in  this  country  and  in  nearly 
all  the  States,  and  the  Church  has  always  been  defeated,"  while 
again  in  another  jDart  of  your  reply,  referring  to  what  took  place 
in  New  ^ork  about  forty  years  ago,  in  connection  with  the 
school  question,  you  say  "it  (the  school  question)  was  (then) 
settled,  and  for  the  United  States  of  America  definitely  settled." 

Now,  sir,  it  does  seem  strange  to  me — and  I  have  no  doubt  it 
will  seem  strange  to  a  good  many  of  yoMV  readers,  too — that  a 
gentleman  who  believes  as  you  do,  that  a  discussion  of  this 
nature  is  unprofitable,  the  matter,  as  you  affirm,  having  been 
definitely  settled  as  far  back  as  forty  years  ago,  should  have  in- 
vited me,  in  an  open  letter,  to  discuss  it.  When  you  pub- 
lished your  card  of  invitation  to  me,  why  did  you  not  then  think 
as  you  now  do  ?  I  never  sought  to  engage  in  this  discussion  at 
all;  I  never  desired  to  obtrude  myself  on  the  attention  of  your 
readers,  and  never  would;  but  you  challenged  me,  and  I  accepted 
your  challenge.  For,  bear  in  mind,  sir,  that  it  was  not  I  but 
you,  yourself,  Avho  proposed,  in  your  issue  of  the  10th  ult.,  the 
discussion  of  this  matter.     In  your  open  letter,  addressed  to  me. 


[33] 

of  that  date,  you  professed  yourself  most  auxious  to  debate  this 
question  in  a  calm,  thoughtful  and  gentlemanly  way.  For,  as 
you  said,  "  You  would  not  willingly  misrepresent  the  attitude 
taken  by  the  Roman  Catholic  Church  in  California  in  reference 
to  our  public  schools."  And  therefore  you  added,  "  I  am  willing 
to  discuss  this  question;  I  think  it  a  practical  one,  and  would  do 
it  courteously."  You  even  said,  in  a  communication  that  passed 
between  us  on  the  matter,  "  I  am  anxious  to  discuss  this  ques- 
tion." And  now  in  the  face  of  these  protestations,  after  drag- 
ging my  name  before  the  public,  you  say  it  is  an  unprofitable 
question  to  discuss,  and  that  the  matter  has  been  definitely  set- 
tled more  than  a  generation  ago !  How  am  I  to  interpret  this 
seeming  contradiction;  how  am  I  to  explain  your  sudden  change 
of  sentiment  ?  Two  weeks  ago  you  were  willing  and  anxious  to 
disGuss  the  matter,  because  you  considered  it  "  practical,"  and 
now  you  are  unwilling,  because  you  consider  it  "unprofitable." 
Is  it  the  same  gentleman  that  is  editing  the  ArgonatU  to-day  who 
was  conducting  it  a  fortnight  ago?  Indeed,  sir,  this  seems  to 
me  little  better  than  trifling  with  a  very  serious  subject.  I  think 
I  had  a  right  to  expect  different  from  this.  I  met  you  in  the 
very  best  of  faith.  I  believed  you  were  sincere  when  you  pro- 
posed the  discussion  of  this  matter,  and  I  never  for  a  moment 
questioned  the  integrity  of  your  declaration,  for  I  did  not  sup- 
pose it  possible  that  a  gentleman  occupying  such  a  prominent 
position  as  you  do  would  propose  for  public  discussion  a  serious 
matter  of  this  nature,  and  immediatly  after  declare  it  to  be  un- 
profitable. Had  I,  under  the  plea  of  debating  the  common 
school  question  indulged  in  censurable  and  ofi^ensive  strictures 
on  the  character  aud  workings  of  the  Protestant  religion,  what 
would  your  readers  think  of  me  ?  Aud  does  your  position  war- 
rant you  in  doing  and  sa3'ing  what,  under  like  circumstances, 
would  be  entirel}'  unallowable  for  me?  In  short,  sii',  I  cannot 
help  saying  that  this  proceeding  of  yours  looks  very  like  beating 
a  hasty  retreat  or  hoisting  the  white  flag  the  very  moment  the 
first  broadside  has  been  cast  into  the  enemy's  intrenchments. 

I  must,  however,  acknowledge  that  this  rapid  change  of  senti- 
ment is  not  foreign  to  your  character  when  dealing  with  the 
public  school  question,  for,  while  you  are  loud  in  your  praises 
of  this  system,  declaring  it  to  be  the  one  institution  which 
Americans  most  cherish,  and  for  which  they  would  most  freely 
imperil  their  lives,  a  few  years  ago  you  held  the  very  contrary 
opinion,  going  so  far  as  to  declare  that  the  school  system  of 
this  country  was  a  sham  and  a  fraud.  If  you  look  into  your 
issue  of  the  21th  of  August,  1878,  you  will  find  that  you  then 
used  this  very  remarkable  language : 

"  The  whole  system  of  comuion  school  education,  as  now  con- 
ducted, is  a  sliain  and  a  fraud." 

Mark  that,  sir;  the  whole  system  is  a  sham  and  a  fraud.  How 
has  the  system  been  so  materially  altered  since  1878,  that,  while 
it  was  then   a  sham  and  a  fraud,  it  is  now  the  ne  ijIus  ullra  of 


[  -^i  ] 

jierfoction  ?  Ih  it  Mr.  Frank  Pixley  Avho  .s2)f!ikH  now,  niid  wlio 
Hpoke  tlieii  ?  "  The  voice,  indooti,  is  tlie  voioo  of  Jaculj,  but  the 
hniitLs  are  the  hands  of  Ksau.  '  All,  sir,  well  may  I  say,  "  Con- 
sistency, thou  art  a  jewel,"  but  thou  dost  not  abide  in  the 
ArrjoiHtul  office. 

i^oubtless  you  never  thoufj-ht,  when  yon  came  out  in  your  late 
rojt'.  as  champion  of  the  present  public  school  system,  that  the 
public  remembered  that  you  had  written  the  above.  But  some 
men  have  lon^'er  memories  than  you  would  ^'ive  them  credit  for. 
Indeed,  there  is  such  a  thing  as  a  man  dipfginj,'  his  own  grave, 
and  you  know  wbat  the  psalmist  has  said:  "  He  had  opened 
a  pit  and  dug  it,  and  he  is  fallen  into  (he  ]iole  he  made."  [Some- 
times men  lay  traps  and  snares  for  others,  but  somehow  or  other, 
instead  of  catching  their  victims,  they  unwittingly'  manage  to  get 
very  uni^ieasantly  entangled  themselves.  But,  sir,  yo\i  said 
more  in  condemnation  of  the  school  system  than  what  I  have 
quoted.  On  the  IHth  of  July  of  the  same  year,  writing  about 
the  training  ship  Jamestown,  you  said: 

"  We  regard  the  whole  sham  as  a  piece  of  wicked  profligacy 
out  of  which  able  politicians  may  steal  from  the  tax-payers  a 
luxurious  living  for  a  few  wretched  favorites.  Our  conivton  school 
sy.ifem  is  of  I  he  same  clolJi." 

That  is,  as  I  understand  your  meaning,  a  sLam  and  a  piece  of 
wicked  profligacy.  Then  you  continue  thus:  "  "We  spend  in 
San  Francisco  one  million  dollars  aimually  to  over-educate  and 
mis-educate  our  children.  The  average  graduate  of  our  high 
schools,  both  boys  and  girls,  is,  by  the  system,  rendered  unfit 
for  the  station  in  life  to  which  he  or  she  is  born."  And  this  is 
the  magnificent  system  for  which  you  now  tell  us  the  American 
jDeople  are  ready  to  die — a  system  which,  according  to  you,  unfits 
persons  for  the  stations  in  life  for  which  they  were  born.  There 
is  a  very  apt  expression  which  I  think  may  be  well  applied  here: 
"  Ex  ore  tuo  te  judlco" — out  of  thy  own  mouth  I  convict  thee. 
It  is  a  very  dangerous  thing,  sir,  for  a  public  man  to  have  two 
strings  to  his  bow — to  play  fast  and  loose,  saying  one  thing  now 
and  <"he  contrary  to-morrow.  Such  a  man  can  never  have  any 
weight  or  authority  even  with  the  least  scrupulous,  for  no  matter 
what  men's  character  and  principles  may  be  no  one  ever  likes  to 
indorse  contradiction. 

Again,  in  another  part  of  your  editorial  of  the  date  I  refer  to 
you  "also  said:  "  The  joresent  educational  system  /.s  distructive  of 
all  respect  for  jyhysictl  labor.  If  the  statistics  of  our  San  Fran- 
cisco schools  could  be  ascertained,  we  are  confident  that  the 
children  ivho  hare  graduated  in  crime  out-num'ber  those  icho  hare 
accepted  a  life  of  physical  labor.  We  are  producing  a  class  of  use- 
less boys  and  unprofitable  girls."  • 

Did  I,  sir,  or  any  other  Catholic  priest  on  this  coast,  ever 
speak  as  hard  or  disparagingly  of  the  public  school  system  as 
that?  If  we  did,  what  a  howl  of  virtuous  indignation  you 
would  raise  against  us.  and  what  a  handle  you  would  make  of 


[35] 

our  words  !  The  old  saying  is,  indeed,  quite  true,  that  men  can 
see  a  mote  in  others'  eyes,  but  not  a  beam  in  their  own.  "Medice 
^ura  (eipsum  " — johj-sician,  cure  thyself,  Befoi'e  you  ever  again 
undertake  to  laud  the  public  school  system  of  this  country-,  you 
will  have  to  explain  these  words,  and  you  will  have  to  do  so  in  a 
somewhat  different  manner  from  the  way  in  which,  you  met  my 
arguments  by  merely  saying,   "  We  declare     *     *     ,  we  declare 

*  *  ,  we  assert  *  *  ,"  as  if  your  declaration  and  asser- 
tion amounted  to  a  satisfactory  proof. 

Let  me  continue;  for  extracts  of  this  kind,  of  which  I  have 
now  given  a  sample,  will  I  think,  sir,  prove  interesting  to  many 
of  your  readers:  "If  it  were  not  for  our  immigrati)ig  class, 
industrial  vocations  would  come  to  a  deadlock."  Again  I  ask,  is 
that  the  system  for  which  Americans  should  imperil  their  lives 
and  be  read}'  to  die  r 

"  The  time  will  come  when  in  America,  and  in  California,  the 
fact  will  assert  itself,  that  our  present  school  system  is  destructive 
of  the  class  of  working  people.  Nor  do  we  believe  that  the  kind 
and  degree  Oi  education  given  at  our  high  grade  free  schools  is 
<3alculated  to  preserve  either  the  virtue  or  the  honesty  of  our  7'ising 
■generation."  Good,  sir;  admirable!  No  man  could  utter  truer 
words.  Now,  at  least,  we  are  in  accord.  Neither  the  kind  nor 
the  degree  of  education  given  in  the  common  schools  is  calcu- 
lated to  preserve  either  the  virtue  or  the  honesty  of  the  rising 
generation.  These  golden  words  should  be  treasured  up  and 
handed  down  to  posterity  with  the  most  jealous  care,  so  that  all 
men  may  know  that  in  the  year  of.  our  Lord,  1878,  the  editor  of 
the  Argonaut  pronounced  ex  cathedra  that  the  common  school 
system  of  America  is  not  calculated  to  preserve  the  virtue  or 
honesty  of  the  rising  generation.  I  think  some  of  the  friends 
of  the  school  system  will  now  be  inclined  to  cry  out,  in  the 
words  of  the  poet,  "  Non  tali  auxilio,  nee  defensoribus   istis." 

Argonaut,  July  20,1878:  "Our  boys  are  milksop-educated, 
nerveless,  cowardly  hangers-on  upon  their  mothers'  apron- 
strings.  *  *  *  Who  expect  to  live  upon  their  fathers'  earn- 
ings. Oar  girls  are  a  worthless  set,  becoming  pach  jeav  more 
worthless,  and  it  is  not  their  fault.  We  are  educating  them  to 
become  the  wives  of  rich  men,  playthings  and  ornaments  of 
luxurious  homes;  and  if  they  fail  and  we  fail,  then  God  help 
them .  Society  is  strewn  with  the  wrecks,  and  the  tempest  has 
just  begun."  So  it  has,  sir;  and  a  terrible  tempest  it  will  be 
when  it  rises  to  its  full  height,  and  sweeps  this  continent  from 
shore  to  shore,  as  it  inevitably  will,  unless  measures  are  taken, 
and  that  very  soon,  to  avert  the  awful  calamity.  "  In  another 
generation  or  two,  the  American  born  will  be  a  pitiable,  helpless 
thing." 

Well,  indeed,  sir,  may  your  readers  rub  their  eyes  and  inquire, 
is  this  man  really  quoting  from  Mr.  Pixley  ?  Surely  the  editor 
of  the  Argonaut  did  not  say  these  things.  If  any  one  doubts 
jmy  veracity,  I  refer  him  to  the  files  of  yoar  paper,  which  are  on 
hand  in  San  Francisco. 


[  3fi  ] 

In  your  issue  of  the  24th  of  Aupfust,  1H78,  I  fiiid  an  exreecl- 
iugly  just  statement.  "The  position  taken  by  tlie  ArehbiHhop- 
in  reference  to  the  attendance  of  Catholic  chihlren  (jf  our  un- 
sectarian  schools  seems  to  us  to  he  entirely  aj)}>ro]»riHte."  In^ 
deed,  sir,  it  is  most  appropriate.  "If  a  reli{,aous  education  i» 
of  higher  importance  than  a  secular  one,  if  tlie  salvati(jn  of  the 
soul  is  to  be  imperiled  by  a  neglect  of  Christian  teaching,  then, 
clearly,  it  is  the  duty  of  the  Catholic  pastor  to  warn  those  under 
his  religious  care,  not  to  imperil  the  future  of  their  children  by 
exiDosiug  them  to  the  influence  of  a  system  of  education  con- 
spicuous for  the  absence  of  religious  and  moral  training.  To 
punish  the  contumacious  parent  by  withholding  from  him  the 
Church  sacraments,  as  a  penalty  for  disregard  of  the  counsels  of 
the  Church,  seems  also  to  be  hi(jldy  lof/ical  and  propn-." 

Bravo,  sir;  bravo!  Your  never  in  your  whole  life  reasonetl 
more  logically  than  when  you  wrote  these  words. 

Again,  under  the  same  date  as  I  have  given  last,  I  also  find 
the  following  judicious  and  thoughtful  sentiments:  "The  free 
common  schools  that  we  would  have,  should  graduate  all  their 
pupils  at  fourteen  years  of  age.  Teachers  should  be  women. 
The  boy  or  girl  who,  by  his  own  or  her  own  exertion,  could  pre- 
pare for  a  higher  education,  we  would  aid  through  the  State 
University.  We  wottld  thus  in  San  Francisco  make  a  practical 
saving  to  the  taxpayers  of  nearly  a  million  of  dollars,  and,  what 
is  better,  we  would  then  turn  thousands  of  half-educated  and 
overstufl'ed  dunces  into  honest  workingmen  and  women.  Our 
whole  common  free  school  sy&tem  haa  departed  jrovi  il.s  oinffinal 
scope  and  purpose,  or,  rather,  it  has  been  diverted  by  dema- 
gogues,  jobbers  and  place  hunters  from  its  oi;iginal  design." 

1  think  your  readers  have  now  suflicient  to  convince  them  that 
the  estimation  in  A\hich  you  held  the  public  schools  in  1878, 
differs  somewhat  from  that  in  which  you  now  hold  them. 

It  won't  do,  in  explanation  of  this,  to  have  recourse  to  the 
Grecian  method  of  solving  the  difliculty,  by  appealing  from 
Philip  drunk  to  Philij)  sober,  for  you  are  notably  an  abstemious- 
and  temperate  gentleman.  I  leave  the  explanation,  then,  en- 
tirely to  yourself,  and  I  shall  be  very  happy  to  learn  the  extra- 
ordinary change  that  has  taken  place  within  the  last  few  years  in 
the  common  scliool  svstem,  so  that  what  four  years  ago  was  a 
sham  and  a  fraud,  is  now  about  the  most  perfect  of  institutions,, 
and  the  only  thing  that  can  successfully  defy  the  power  of  helL 
"  The  only  thing  in  this  world  that  they  (the  gates  of  hell)  will 
not  prevail  against  is  the  non-sectarian  school-house." 

Another,  whose  assurance  I  would  much  prefer  to  accept,  ha& 
said  that  the  gates  of  hell  shall  not  prevail  against  the  Church, 
But  of  course,  this  is  merely  a  matter  of  taste,  and  those  who 
feel  so  disposed  are  perfectly  at  liberty  to  place  the  most  un- 
bounded confidence  in  the  prophetic  utterances  of  the  editor  of 
the  Arcjorioxd.  But,  for  my  part,  I  would  jnefer  to  believe  that 
it   is   a   little   more   difficult  for  the  powers  of   hell  to  prevail 


[37    I 

against  the  Church  of  God  than  against  the  common  school  sj'S- 
tem  of  this  countiy;  for  I  find  in  the  divine  writings  an  assur- 
ance for  the  one  but  not  for  the  other.  I  must,  however,  admit, 
sir,  that,  in  one  sense,  I  think  you  ai*e  correct  in  saying  that  the 
powers  of  hell  won't  prevail  against  the  common  school  system 
of  this  country.  For  persons  don't  genei'ally  seek  to  destroj' 
what  is  most  useful  to  them;  every  man  cherishes  what  is  ser- 
viceable to  his  own  cause,  and,  in  this  respect,  I  believe  that 
fBven  Beelzebub  himself  is  not  an  exception.  He  certainly  would 
he  a  very  great  fool  if  he  were,  and  he  is  not  generally  accredited 
■with  being  indifferent  to  the  advancement  of  his  own  interests. 
This  is  why  I  think  you  are  correct  in  saying  that  the  powers  of 
hell  won't  prevail  against  this  system. 

Your  editorial  is  supposed  to  be  an  answer  to  my  letter,  but 
how  far  it  can  be  satisfactorily  regarded  as  such — that  is,  how 
far  it  has  met  the  points  at  issue — I  am  quite  willing  to  leave  to 
your  readers  to  say.  I  think  it  will  be  seen  that  you  have  not 
rebutted  one  single  statement  in  my  whole  communication.  In- 
stead of  grappling  with  the  arguments,  you  have  entertained 
your  readers  with  entirely  irrelevant  matters;  you  have  filled 
your  columns  with  strictures  and  censures  of  my  Church.  What 
bearing,  for  instance,  has  the  following  sentence  on  the  subject 
under  discussion:  "If  there  is  a  hell,  and  hell  has  gates,  and 
if  these  bronze  barriers  of  the  damned  ever  come  forth  for  con- 
jflict,"  etc.  What,  I  ask,  has  this  to  do  with  the  merits  of  the 
school  question  ?  Just  as  little  as  the  man  in  the  moon  has  to 
do  with  our  terrestrial  affairs.  I  didn't  undertake  to  discuss 
whether  there  is  or  is  not  a  hell.  That  is  a  matter  we  will  find 
out  hereafter  ,and  perhaps  too  soon  for  some  of  us.  Such  writ- 
ing is  wholly  irrelevant;  it  is  foreign  to  the  subject  and  has 
nothing  to  do  with  the  matter  under  debate.  No  doubt  some 
ma}^  consider  it  a  very  tine  specimen  of  English,  while  others, 
on  the  contrary,  might  be  inclined  to  i-egard  it  merely  as  high- 
ialutin  or  tall  talk.  What  a  Ruskin  or  a  Carlyle  would  think  of 
it  I  don't  know,  but  I  do  know  that  it  has  no  immediate  bearing 
on  the  subject  proposed  for  discussion. 

You  begin  your  answer  to  me  by  sa3ing-  "  The  Arrjonaid  does 
not  believe  that  the  Roman  Catholic  Church  has  accomi^lished 
as  much  good  as  evil  in  its  past  history."  Again  I  ask  is  that 
the  matter  we  proposed  to  discuss?  Did  we  undertake  to  del)ate 
the  amount  of  good  or  evil  wrought  by  the  Catholic  Church  ?  I 
once  heard  of  a  young  man  who  was  asked  if  he  could  sing, 
^'  No,"  said  he, "'  but  my  brother  is  the  devil  at  the  French  flute!  " 
To  talk  about  the  amount  of  good  or  evil  done  by  the  Catholic 
Church  while  the  question  under  consideration  is  the  school 
question  of  this  country,  is  about  as  unreasonable  an  answer. 
There  are  some  persons  who,  when  you  ask  them  anything  they 
are  sure  to  answer  you  by  asking  a  question  in  return.  This  is 
peculiarly  an  idiosyncrasy  of  a  certain  class,  but  I  did  not  know 
that  it  was  much  adopted  by  those  who  regard  themselves  as  of 
the  true  American  stock. 

293494 


[  -J^  ] 

Jumping  from  one  thiiiji,'  to  nnothcr,  and  answering  one  thing' 
by  introducing  nnothcr,  is  id  ways  th(;  trick  of  the  controversial 
juggler — it  is  the  artifice  of  a  Proteus. 

"  Millo  adde  catenas  effigiet  tanien  ha'C  sceleratus  vincula, 
Proteus." 

In  every  legislative  Assembly  there  is  an  official  entitled  the 
Speaker,  whose  business  it  is,  when  a  member  happens  to  forget 
himself  and  to  stray  away  from  the  main  question  under  debate, 
to  call  him  to  order  and  request  him  to  talk  to  the  point  at  issue 
or  to  resume  his  seat.  Tlie  same  rule  should  be  applied  to  all 
discussions  Avherever  conducted.  A  man  should  either  speak  to 
the  point  or  acknowledge  the  force  of  his  adversaiy's  arguments. 
Side  issues  should  never  be  introduced;  doubtless  they  are  very 
convenient  at  times,  for  they  serve  to  cover  a  man's  retreat,  if 
his  opponent  is  silly  enough  to  follow  him,  and  thus  allow  him 
to  draw  off  attention  from  the  main  question;  but  such  shifts 
always  evince  either  a  lack  of  argument,  an  illogical  mind,  or  a 
weak  cause. 

Again,  you  say,  "  The  world  would  have  been  better  off  if  it 
[the  Catholic  Church]  had  never  existed."  That,  sir,  is  merely  an 
opinion,  and  one  which  maybe  veiy  fairly  contested,  taking  even 
for  our  guide  Protestant  testimony.  For  such  eminent  Protes- 
tant writers  as  Guizot  and  Hallam  have  not  been  slow  to  recog- 
nize the  services  rendered  to  the  world  by  Catholicism,  the  for- 
mer having  gone  so  far  as  to  say  that  if  the  Church  had  not 
existed  the  whole  world  would  have  been  delivered  over  to  mere 
brute  force.  But,  anyhow,  I  never  said  the  world  would  not  be 
better  off  in  such  a  case.  I  have  my  own  opinion  on  that  point 
just  as  you  have  yours.  "What  I  objt  ct  to  is  that  it  has  nothing  to 
do  with  the  question  at  issue.  Why  go  outside  the  field  of 
debate  in  this  fashion?  Why  not  rather  answer  my  arguments;, 
or,  at  least,  make  some  pretense  of  doing  so  ?  1  stated,  and  I 
gave  j)roof  for  my  statement,  that  the  system  of  education  that 
does  not  embrace  the  religious  element  is  defective.  Did  you 
take  me  up  on  that?  Did  3'ou  refute  my  arguments  ?  What 
did  you  say?  Not  a  syllable.  I  also  stated,  and  I  backed  up 
my  statement  with  ample  proof,  that  the  education  which  is 
devoid  of  religion  is  dangerous  to  the  nation.  Did  you  rebut 
that  ?  Did  you  disprove  it  ?  What  did  you  say  to  it  ?  Not  a 
syllable.  Then  I  proved  that  the  State  had  no  right  to  stand 
between  the  parent  and  the  child,  and  how  did  you  answer  me? 
Certainly  in  a  ver}-  extraordinary  manner,  by  asserting  that  the 
State  does  not  stand  betweeii  the  parent  and  the  priest — as  if  I 
asserted  that  it  did.  And  now  it  might  be  proper  to  inquire  why 
you  did  not  take  up  and  refute  at  least  some  of  my  arguments. 
For  in  every  debate,  at  least  the  principal  arguments  of  an 
opponent  are  made  the  main  object  of  discussion,  and  whenever 
they  are  thrown  in  the  back-ground  and  wholly  ignored,  the 
plain  and  undeniable  inference  is  that  they  are  irrefragable.  I, 
therefore,  conclude  that  you  found  yourself  unable,  under  the 


[39] 

circumstances,  to  answer  the  arguments  embodied  in  my  letter. 
Either  that  or  you  must  hold  in  the  most  sovereign  contempt  the 
intelligence  of  your  readers  if  you  imagined  that  tbey  would 
regard  as  a  satisfactory^  refutation  of  my  position  such  ^•ague, 
inapplicable  sentences  as  that  "  the  world  would  have  been 
better  off  had  the  Catholic  Church  never  existed;  that  the  human 
race  would  have  escaped  the  horrors  of  war;  *  *  *  * 
that  science  would  have  been  more  advanced,"  etc.  I  assure 
you,  sir,  I  had  a  much  higher  opinion  of  your  tact  and  ability  as 
a  reasoner,  and  I  feel  wholly  disappointed  to  find  that,  instead 
of  meeting  me  squarel}'^,  you  should  have  thus  run  into  entirely 
irrelevant  matters.  Had  I  to  deal  with  a  young  inexperienced 
youth,  I  might  have  been  prepared  for  something  of  this  kind; 
but  having  to  do  with  a  veteran  editor,  a  man  of  large  experience 
and  much  legal  acumen,  I  must  frankly  avow,  you  have  taken  me 
entirely  by  surprise.  If  you  had  gone  into  a  philosophical  view 
of  the  supremacy  of  the  State,  and  its  absolute  rights  over  its 
subjects,  I  could  have  appreciated  your  argument;  but  when  you 
talk  merel}'  about  chains  dungeons  and  thumbscrews,  and  such 
like,  I  have  only  to  suppose  that  either  you  have  not  seriously 
applied  your  mind  to  the  question  at  all,  or  that  you  are  not  the 
able  man  I  took  3'ou  to  be. 

And  now,  sir,  I  think  I  ma,y  very  aptly  introduce  here  a  para- 
graph from  Chax-les  Reade's  little  work,  "The  Coming  Man:" 
''  Pacts  should  always  be  faced.  The  champion  of  truth  neither 
shirks  nor  succumbs.  Either  he  lets  hostile  facts  convert  him, 
or  he  meets  them  with  more  facts  and  weightier.  The  same  with 
arguments;  to  mis-state,  or  even  understate,  an  oj^poneut's  ca.se, 
is  the  practice  of  the  many  respectable  rogues  controversy  breeds; 
but  it  is  more  cunning  than  wise;  for  these  are  the  known  arts  of 
falsehood,  and  truth  gains  nothing  by.  them.  Truth  can  state 
the  other  side  fairly,  yet  still  prevail;  since,  to  put  it  in  Shakes- 
peare's words: 

"  '  Good  reasons  must,  perforce,  give  place  to  better.'  " 

Again,  you  say  "  that  the  Argonaut  is  quite  sux-e  it  will  never 
be  convinced  that  the  Roman  Church  is  of  divine  authority; 
that  its  head  is  the  vicegerent  of  G-od;  that  he  carries  the 
keys;  that  he  is  by  virtue  of  his  spiritual  office  the  superior 
to  all  in  civil  authority;  that  he  is  infallible  and  impeccable,"  etc. 
Now,  once  more,  I  ask,  did  I  ever  seek  to  convince  you  of  any 
of  these  things?  Did  I  ever  try  to  persuade  you  that  the  Pope 
is  impeccable?  If  I  did,  I  would  be  guilty  of  a  very  naughty 
offense,  and  one  for  which  my  Archbishop  Avould  very  readil3' 
call  me  to  an  account.  For,  by  i^ropounding  so  utterly  un- 
reasonable a  heresy,  and  trying  to  imbue  therewith  so  respectable 
a  gentleman  as  the  editor  of  the  Argonaut,  I  would  be  laying  my- 
self open  to  the  charge  of  having  fallen  from  the  faith.  >io,  no, 
sir,  I  never,  for  a  moment,  thought  of  making  you  believe  that 
the  Tope  is  impeccable,  for  this  is  a  matter  tliat  neither  I  nor 
any  other  member  of  the  Catholic  Church  ever  held  or  imagined. 


[  '1<^  ] 

You  say  tlmt  bcin^if  a  native  of  New  York  yon.  know  more 
about  the  wovkin;^s  of  the  system  there  than  elsewhere,  ami  theu 
,yuu  go  on  to  ^ive  an  account  <;f  the  system  in  its  orip^in.  It  is  a 
2)ity  you  did  not  give  your  readers  all  the  facts,  l)ut,  as  you  have 
not  done  so,  with  your  ])ermission  I  will  sujjply  what  lias  been 
omitted.  For,  indeed,  I  consider  it  very  important  that  your 
readers  should  be  informed  on  this  head.  For,  if  I  mistake  not, 
there  is  a  very  great  misapprehension  existing  in  the  rninds  of 
many  regarding  the  origin  of  the  common  school  system  of  thi« 
country,  the  people  generally  believing  that  it  is  now  what  it  was 
at  tirst.  This,  however,  is  a  grievous  mistake.  The  system  is 
just  about  as  ditVerent  now  from  what  it  was  when  first  started  as 
any  two  systems  could  possibly  l)e.  For,  at  first,  it  was  a  fair, 
honoi'able  and  praiseworthy  enterj^rise,  undertaken  in  behalf  of 
the  needy,  and  having  for  its  object  the  enlightenment  of  the 
indigent  poor  without  any  attempt  at  interference,  eitlier  directly 
or  indirectly,  with  their  religious  convictions.  In  fact,  at  tirst, 
and  for  a  considerable  time,  the  moneys  appropriated  to  this  use 
were  disbursed  on  the  denominational  ])lan,  to  the  variou.t  reli- 
gious societies  for  the  purpose  of  education.  The  real  origin  of 
the  common  school  system  of  the  country,  then,  is  this:  About 
the  beginning  of  the  present  century  a  few  noble  hearted,  phil- 
anthrophic  gentlemen  of  New  Y^ork  having  at  their  bead  one 
whose  name  will  ever  stand  prominent  in  the  annals  of  this 
country — De  "Witt  Clinton — formed  themselves  into  a  society,  the 
object  of  which  was  to  look  after  and  educate  the  poor  little 
waifs  of  the  city  who  were  neglected  by  all.  In  ihe  first  charter 
of  the  society  the  object  was  stated  in  these  words — viz:  "The 
education  of  the  children  of  persons  in  indigent  circumstances, 
and  who  do  not  belong  to  or  are  not  provided  for  by  any  reli- 
gious society."  And  then,  in  the  subsequent  paragraphs  of  the 
act  of  incorporation,  are  set  forth  as  follows  the  means  by  which 
the  society  hoped  to  reform  their  charge:  "  And.  whereas,  the 
said  persons  have  presented  a  petition  to  the  Legislature  setting 
forth  the  benefits  which  would  result  to  society  from  the  educa- 
tion of  such  childi'en  bi/  imphniliug  i)i  their  mindH  (he  principles  of 
religion  and  moralU}/,  and  by  assisting  their  parents  to  provide 
suitable  situations  for  them,  where  habits  of  industry  and  virtue 
may  be  acqiured,  and  that  it  would  enable  them  more  efiectually 
to  accomplish  the  benevolent  objects  of  their  institution  if  their 
association  were  incorporated." 

So  you  see,  sir,  that  the  public  school  system  in  its  origin  em- 
braced the  very  principle  which  we  are  now  contending  for  to- 
day. How  is  it  that  you  forgot  to  mention  this  very  important 
circumstance  when  you  undertook  to  inform  your  readers  of  the 
origin  of  the  s^-stem?  In  its  inception,  theu,  the  public  school 
system  was  a  private  scheme,  and  one  which  commended  itself 
to  every  benevolent  Christian  mind.  It  was  incorporated  in 
1805,  under  the  title  of  "A  society  instituted  in  the  city  of  New 
York  for  the  establishment  of  a  free  school,  for  the  education  of 


r4i] 

poor  children  who  do  not  belong  to,  or  are  not  provided  for  by 
any  relioious  society."  Three  years  later  the  name  of  the  society 
was  changed  to  that  of  the  "  Free  School  Society  of  New  York," 
its  powers  being  also  extended.  It  was  not,  however,  until  182G 
that  it  received  its  present  title,  or  "  the  public  school  system," 
and  it  was  at  that  date  that  the  State  took  it  under  its  control, 
assumed  its  management  and  began  to  act  in  its  regard  as  the 
Pontifex  Maxim  us 

The  system,  then,  has  departed  from  its  original  programme, 
for  at  first  it  was  private,  denominational  and  religious,  having 
for  its  object,  by  the  coupling  of  religious  with  secular  instnic- 
tion,  the  amelioration  of  the  poor,  indigent,  abandoned  children 
of  New  York.  Why  now,  sir,  I  would  ask  has  the  system  been 
altered?  Why  has  it  been  found  necessary  to  discard  the  prin- 
ciples of  religion  and  morality  ?  From  all  that  is  generall}'  said 
and  written  about  it  the  community  was  led  to  believe  that 
it  was  never  different  from  what  it  is  at  present,  whereas  the 
contrary  is  the  fact.  And  so  infatuated  and  intolerant  did 
men  become  in  its  regard  that  up  to  almost  the  present  it  was 
dangerous  for  a  man  to  oj^en  his  mouth  against  it,  a  Catholic 
clergyman  having  been  tarred  and  feathered  in  Maine  some 
years  ago  for  hav  ng  dared  to  express  an  adverse  opinion  on  its 
merits.  In  fact,  the  thing  became  associated  in  the  minds  of 
piany  with  a  kind  of  supernatural  creation,  and  was  regarded 
with  as  much  awe  and  veneration  as  if  it  had  been  an  incarna- 
tion of  Vishnu  or  Buddha.  But  it  is  now  refreshing  to  think 
that  it  is  being  regarded  as  something  less  sacred  than  it  formerly 
-was  in  the  eyes  of  its  worshipers,  and  though  for  a  period  it 
donned  the  trappings  of  an  imaginary  deity,  the  ugly  idol  is  at 
last  beginning  to  appear  in  all  its  naked  and  hideous  deformity. 

Then  you  go  on  to  say  "  we  do  not  admit  that  religious  teach- 
ing is  indispensable.  *  *  *  -^yg  Jq  ^^q^  admit  that 
b}'  the  exclusion  of  sectarian  teaching,"  etc.  Of  course  I  know 
that  vou  don't  admit  these  things,  and  what  was  the  need  of 
telling  me  that?  Does  the  fact  of  your  not  admitting  the  mat- 
ter settle  the  question?  If  you  think  so,  you  must  have  a  very 
exalted  opinion  of  yourself.  Indeed,  sir,  I  would  seriously 
recommend  to  your  attention  that  axiom  in  logic,  "  Quod  gratis 
asseritur  gratis  negatur."  You  know,  of  course,  what  that 
means.  It  is  not,  then,  what  you  admit  or  don't  admit  that  is 
the  question,  but  what  there  is  reason  to  show  sliould  be 
admitted.  If  your  ipse  dixit  were  to  be  taken  in  this  matter  for 
proof  of  whatever  you  are  pleased  to  affirm  or  deny,  there  would 
be  no  use  in  arguing  the  question  at  all.  I  wonder  what  a  judge 
on  the  bench  would  think  of  a  lawyer  who  would  take  a  case  so 
ai'bitrarily  into  his  hands  as  to  say  to  every  argument  of  the 
opposing  counsel,  "  We  don't  admit  that — we  don't  admit 
that."  Were  such  a  reason  admissible,  it  would  be  exceedingly 
easy  to  settle  every  question. 

Then  again,  you  go  on  to  say:  "  We  declai-e  that  the  world 
is  better.  *  *  *  "\ye   declare  that  in  America 


[42  J 

there  are  no  Catholic  schools  at  all  comparable,"  etc.  Now,  sir, 
■without  at  all  meaninff  tho  slightest  discourtesy,  allow  me  to  say 
that  I  don't  care  one  fi}^  for  your  declarations.  One  single,  solid 
reason  would  weigh  more  with  me  than  all  the  declarations  and 
asseverations  you  could  make  in  the  course  of  a  year,  and  1  be- 
lieve that,  in  this,  your  readers  generally  share  with  me  the 
same  sentiments. 

But  for  the  interest  of  the  reader  it  may  be  well  to  hear  your 
entire  declaration.  Well,  here  it  is:  "We  declare  that  the 
world  is  better  off  *  *  *  that  it  has  more  liread  to  eat  and 
clothes  to  wear  *  *  *  since  the  civilized  nations  have  begun 
to  emancipate  themselves  from  the  teachings  of  the  Roman 
Catholic  Church."  Well,  sir,  bread  and  clothes  are  certainly 
very  good  things,  but  I  think  tbere  is  something  better.  I  be- 
lieve it  is  said  in  a  certain  book,  "  not  in  bread  alone  doth  man 
live."  I  believe  it  is  also  said  in  the  same  volume,  "  seek  first 
the  Kingdom  of  God,"  and  again,  "  what  doth  it  profit  a  man  to 
gain  the  whole  world  and  suiier  the  loss  of  his  own  soul."  I 
wonder  what  good  wall  bi'ead  and  clothes  be  to  a  man  who  fails 
to  find  his  way  to  where  all  virtuous  people  expect  to  go.  A 
man  won't  always  want  bread  and  clothes,  but  he  will  some- 
thing else. 

Again,  "We  declare  that  in  America  there  are  no  Catholic 
schools  at  all  comparable  with  the  public  schools.'  That  is  a 
mere  assertion.  Is  it  possible  that  you  have  your  reader-s  in  sucK 
a  state  of  absolute  subjection  that  your  mere  declaration  is  suffi- 
cient to  guarantee  the  certainty  of  all  your  statements  ?  To 
many  men  a  little  jDroof  would  be  exceedingly  gratif^'ing,  par- 
ticularly in  a  case  like  this,  when  we  find  many  Protestant 
parents  preferring  to  send  their  children  to  Catholic  convents  or 
Catholic  colleges,  rather  than  to  Protestant  educational  estab- 
lishments. Does  it  not  strike  you,  sir,  as  rather  singular  that 
they  should  do  this  if  they  thought  with  you,  that  the  free 
schools  are  the  best  in  the  country  ? 

"  It  is  not  from  the  dormitory  or  playground  of  monastery  or 
nunnery  that  the  most  honorable  of  men  and  the  most  exemplaiy 
of  W'Omen  are  produced."  That  again  is  merely  an  assertion, 
and  to  be  accepted  by  all,  would  require  a  little  more  than  your 
asseveration.  No  doubt  your  position  is  one  which  carries  con- 
siderable weight  with  it;  you  are  generally  regarded,  I  believe, 
as  an  authorit}'  by  those  for  whom  you  write,  but,  somehow  or 
other  in  this  enlightened  age,  men  don't  like  to  be  led  by  the 
nose.  They  like  to  have  some  reason  given  tliem,  however 
small,  for  what  they  are  expected  to  believe.  "  It  is  from  the 
free,  common  and  non-sectarian  schools  of  America  that  the 
best  American  citizens,  both  men  and  women,  come.  We  state 
this  proposition  from  reading  of  history,  our  observation  in  for- 
eign travel,  and  the  familiar  statistics  of  the  criminal  and 
eleemosynary  institutions."  It  would  take  an  exceedingly  pene- 
trating eye  to  discover  an  infinitesimal  particle  of  proof   in  this. 


[43] 

Like  all  other  assertions,  it  is  mere  assertion  and  nothing  more, 
and  consequently  cannot  weigh  -with  any  logical  or  inquiring 
mind.  It  is,  indeed,  to  be  regretted  that  you  did  not  unbend  a 
little  and  give  a  few  instances  from  your  "  historical  reading," 
or  some  cases  in  point  from  your  '*  foreign  travel."  'Ihe  latter, 
especially,  would  be  exceedingly  interesting  to  the  writer,  as  he 
has  happened  to  have  traveled  a  little  in  his  day,  and  perhaps 
even  more  than  the  editor  of  the  Argonaut,  yet  somehow  or 
other  he  has  never  encountered  or  been  able  to  discover  in  all  he 
has  seen  and  traveled  over,  though  he  has  been  in  the  four 
quarters  of  the  globe,  any  evidence  or  proof  tending  to  convince 
him  that  it  is  from  the  common  schools  of  this  country  that  the 
best  men  and  womcii  come.  Some  men,  indeed,  see  double, 
while  others  imagine  the}'  see  things  which  they  do  not.  As  an 
instance,  I  once  heard  of  a  gentleman,  who,  happening  for  the 
first  time  to  pay  a  visit  to  Kome,  and  seeing  on  one  of  the 
Church  doors  a  notice  stating  the  amount  required  for  the  use  of 
chairs  during  divine  service,  took  it  for  a  tarifi:"  for  the  re- 
mission of  sins,  and,  of  course,  on  retui-ning  to  his  own  country, 
indignantly  declaimed  against  the  horrors  of  so  debasing  a 
system. 

There  is  only  one  more  paragraph  in  your  editorial  to  which  I 
wish  to  refer.  It  is  your  admission  that  the  public  school  system 
is  destructive  of  the  faith  of  our  children.  You  even  rejoice  at 
this,  for,  after  quoting  my  words  to  this  effect,  you  say  "  we 
confess  this  in  the  very  language  you  provide  us,  and  we  admit 
that  it  is  this  idea  which  makes  us  overlook  its  many  imperfec- 
tions, and  prompts  us  to  declare  that  it  is  the  one  institution 
which  Americans  most  cherish,  and  in  defense  of  which,  they 
would  most  freely  imperil  their  lives."  I  would  be  unwilling  to 
think  that  there  are  many  Protestant  gentlemen  in  San  Fran- 
cisco who  share  with  you  so  intolei-ant  and  bigoted  an  assertion. 
For  what  can  be  more  intolerant,  bigoted,  sectarian  and  narrow- 
minded,  than  to  cherish,  love  and  be  ready  to  die  for  an  insti- 
tution, because,  that  in  its  working  and  tendencies  it  is  destruct- 
ive of  the  faith  of  others.  This  surely  is  not  the  sentiment  of 
the  American  people  as  a  people;  it  is  rather  the  sentiment  of  a 
little  clique  of  sectarian  know-nothing  bigots.  Hence,  we 
Catholics  should  never  cease  in  pressing  home  this  all-important 
question  until  the  nation  comes  to  understand  our  position  and 
the  hardships  that  we  are  laboring  under,  and  as  sure  as  we  are 
faithful  to  our  principles,  so  sure  will  we  ultimately  succeed;  for 
sooner  or  later,  reason  will  prevail,  and  right  will  triumph. 
Others,  too,  will  be  with  us  in  this  matter,  for  their  interests  as 
well  as  ours  our  at  stake,  and  numerous  Protestants  are  now  be- 
ginning to  see  that  something  must  be  done  to  stem  the  torrent 
of  infidelity  that  is  at  present  rolling  over  the  country. 

In  fine,  sir,  your  entire  article  is  of  that  character  which  fully 
justifies  your  assertion  that  it  would  be  wholly  unprofitable  to 
discuss  this  matter  with  you  in  your  columns.     It  would,  indeed. 


[  '1^  J 

be  unprofitable  to  attempt  to  discuss  any  subject  when  the 
l)oiut8  at  issue  ai'C  slun-ed  over  and  entirely  irrelevant  matters 
drii/^fi^od  in.  I  cannot,  however,  conclude  this  letter  without  ex- 
j)re.ssin{,'  my  rej,'ret  that,  after  haviiij,'  accepted  your  invitation  to 
discuss  the  affair,  in  a  calm,  temperate  and  ctnirtoous  manner, 
you  should  have  made  it  the  occasion  of  a  severe  and  bitter  at- 
tack on  my  Church.  I  met  you,  as  I  have  already  said,  in  the 
best  of  faith;  I  believed  you  were  anxious  to  discuss  the  (ques- 
tion, because  you  said  so,  and  I  never  injagined  for  a  moment, 
when  you  offered  me  that  invitation  you  considered  the 
matter  an  unproHtable  subject  for  discussion  and  a  settled 
question. 

Should  you  then  iu  future,  from  any  motive  or  other,  deem  it 
your  duty  to  address  an  open  letter  to  me,  inviting  me  to  a  dis- 
cussion on  any  subject,  I  will  be  neces.sitated  to  respectfully  de- 
cline the  same. 

I  am,  sir,  yours  truly, 

"SV.     Gleesok. 


[  From  the  Argonaut,  April  7.] 

When  we  asked  Father  Gleeson  to  furnish  for  publicatian  his 
sermon  upon  our  public  s;hools,  he  sent  us  a  fifty-pa.ije  manu- 
script argument  iu  favor  of  a  subdivision  of  our  school  moneys 
to  the  parochial  schools  of  his  Church.  His  leading  argumeut 
was:  "The  free-school  system  is  destroying  our  Church,  and 
"  we  have  already  lost  iu  America  eighteen  millions  of  Komau 
"  Catholic  souls."  Our  reply  was:  "We  are  glad  of  it.  The 
"  Roiuau  Church  is  the  enemy  of  republican  government;  the 
"  papal  power  is  inimical  to  liberty  and  dangerous  to  our  institu- 
"  tions;  and,  if  the  American  school  system  can  beat  Rome,  its 
"  Jesuits,  and  its  conspiring  priests,  we  hail  it  as  an  iustitutiou 
"  to  preserve  with  our  lives."  Father  Gleeson's  rejoinder,  pub- 
lished iu  the  Pod,  charges  us  with  inconsistency  iu  this,  that  we 
have  condemned  the  scht)ol  system,  heretofore,  for  extravagance  iu 
teaching  the  higher  branches  of  learning,  and  for  untitting  the 
children  of  the  laboring  poor  to  fill  contentedly  the  positions  of 
their  parents.  We  admit  it,  and  say  now  the  system  is  full  of 
faults.  We  find  many  things  to  criticise,  to  condemn;  but  if  it 
is  accomplishing  so  grand  a  work  as  the  destruction  of  the 
political  power  and  iufiuence  of  the  Romish  Church  iu  Amei'ica, 
and  is  undermining  the  authority  of  the  Papal  Church— a  Church 
which  we  regard  as  a  most  dangerous  institution,  and  one  which 
threatens  the  prosperity  of  the  government  and  the  liberty  of 
its  people — then  we  liail  it  as  the  last  and  grandest  establish- 
ment of  our  American  commonwealth.  We  are  not  standing  in 
any  awe  of  this  power,  nor  do  we  recognize  any  possibility  of 
danger  from  papal  intrigue,  except  as  it  can  obtain  control  of 
the  education  of   our  youth.     We  recognize  the  past  splendid 


[45] 

triumphs  of  this  Church,  as  all  having  occurred  iu  ages  of  ig- 
norance which  it  has  itself  begotten,  and  in  countries  which  it  has- 
first  ruined,  and  among  people  it  has  tirst  degraded  and  debased. 
Its  magnificent  cathedrals  were  never  reared  where  education 
was  free  and  common  to  all.  Its  impressive  ceremonials  never 
challenged  the  admiration  or  chained  the  attejition  of  an  intelli- 
gent free  people.  This  Church  of  the  apostles,  whose  popes  de- 
mand the  allegiance  of  kings,  and  which  has  falsely  arrogated 
to  itself  the  claim  of  encouraging  art  and  learning,  has  ever 
been,  from  the  time  when  it  robbed  the  splendid  marbles  from 
the  pagan  Coliseum  to  build  the  temples  of  its  faith  in  Iiome,  most 
brutally  intolerant  of  the  faith  of  every  one  who  did  not  worship 
at  its  altars  or  yield  unquestioned  allegiance  to  its  arrogant  as- 
sumption of  civil  powers.  It  is  this  effort  at  the  grasping  of 
political  power  in  America  which  we  resist.  It  is  this  shameful 
assumption  of  the  right  to  interfere  in  the  political  affairs  of  our 
Government  which  we  resent.  The  claim  of  the  Eoman  Pope 
to  the  implicit  obedience  of  American  citizens  in  civil  aft'airs, 
and  that  claim  based  upon  his  absurd  and  sacrilegious  assump- 
tion that  he  is  the  vicegerent  of  God,  rightfully  angers  every 
honest  mind,  and  is  revolting  to  every  intelligent  jDerson.  The 
doctrine  of  papal  infallibility  Cannes  with  it  consequences  de- 
structive of  individual  independence.  The  man  who  is  bigoted 
and  ignorant  enough  to  think  that  by  offending  the  Pope  he 
offends  God  will  obey  the  Pope,  and  give  him  his  political  alle- 
giance, in  opposition  to  any  law,  or  code,  or  executive  which 
does  not  acknowledge  this  foreign  ecclesiastic  as  the  supreme 
civil  ruler.  It  is  the  doctrine  of  this  Church  of  Rome  that  its 
spiritual  head  is  clothed  with  all  political  power,  and  that  his 
civil  authority  should  be  recognized  throughout  the  world.  This 
doctrine  makes  the  Vatican  the  highest  apjiellate  tribunal,  to 
which  must  be  carried  from  courts,  and  jiarliaments,  and  kings 
the  disputes  which  agitate  them.  The  State  has  no  right  which 
it  does  not  hold  in  subordination  to  the  papal  power.  Pius  IX. 
declared  that  "  every  human  being  should  be  subject  to  the 
Roman  Pontiff."  Spiritual  dominion  forbids  liberty  of  con- 
science, and,  as  in  the  city  of  Rome  till  civil  authority  was  justly 
wrenched  from  the  papal  hand  by  the  Italian  king,  no  Protest- 
ant could  worship.  Only  ignorant  people  can  ever  be  brought 
to  submit  themselves  to  the  intolerance  and  cruelty  of  ecclesias- 
tical power.  Ecclesiastical  power  can  only  maintain  itself  upon 
the  ignorance,  sui^erstition,  and  bigotry  of  the  community  in 
which  it  exists.  The  Church  of  Rome,  always  ambitious  of 
power,  seeks  to  aggrandize  itself  in  America.  The  only  way  it 
can  do  so  is  by  destroying  free  schools,  and  thus  paving  the  way 
through  ignorance  to  an  assertion  of  its  most  absurd  and  ridicu- 
lous pretension  of  being  the  only  and  true  Church,  and  that  its 
bishop,  or  Pope,  is  the  vicegerent  of  God,  and  entitled  to  the 
civil  allegiance  of  all  the  world.  To  attain  this  power  the 
Church  cf  Rome  has  lighted  the  fagot,  sharpened  the  steel,  and 


[  40  J 

opened   the    bloody  j,'ravo    in   every  afje.     It  lias  ])f!r.so(;uted  in 
every    laud — Bohemia,    Moravia,    Saxony,    France,    Spain,    the 
Netherlands,   Austria,   Switzerland,  Sardinia,    Tuscany,   Baden, 
Portu<j;al,  and  Ireland.     In  Canada  and  the  Carolinas,  in  South 
America  and  Mexico,  wherever  the   si^ni  of  the  cross  has  ]>een 
rained,  wherever  the  invadinjj^  priest  has  ^'one,  there  has  followed 
abject  subjugation,  attended  by  all  sorts  of  cruel  persecutions 
and  horrible  crimes.     The  histoi'v  of  the  progress  and  dominion 
of    the   Church    of    Rome    has   been   a  history  of   unparalleled 
atrocities.     This  history  will  be  repeated  in  tliis  land  whenever 
this  Church  can  attain  political  ascendancy.     It  is  the  crouching, 
sleepless  cougar,  which  never  closes  its  eyes   never  relaxes  its 
2)urj)ose,  and  is  never  diverted  from  its  prey.     It  never  tolerates 
infidelity.     It  preserves  its  faith  b}'  the  extirpation  of  those  who 
do  not  subscribe  to  its  dogmas.     It  is  just  as  dangerous  to-day 
as  it  was  in  the  time  of  the  Borgia  or  Hildebrand      It  is  just  as 
aggressive  in  America  as  it  ever  was  in  Spain.     It  is  just  as  in- 
tolerant  in    San    Francisco,  under   the   purriug   of   the   velvet- 
mouthed  and  good  Father  Gleeson,  as  it  was  in  Antwerp,  under 
the  rule  of  the  bloody  Alva.     The  bronze  chimes  of  Saint  Pat- 
rick's Church  are  not  more  innocently  musical  than  the  bell  that 
clanged  forth  the  tocsin  at  the  massacre  of  Saint  Bartholomew. 
The  tires  of  the  Inquisition  still  smoulder,  and  the  breath  of  the 
priest,  and  monk,  and  Jesuit,  and  Pope,  would  again  fan  them 
into  devouring  flames  should  the  opportunity  ever  again  occur. 
This  secret  power  is  plotting  in  America  against  the  liberties  of 
its   people;  first,  spiritual   ascendency,  then  political  authority; 
first  destroy  the  American  school-house,  and  on  its  ruins  build 
this   ecclesiastical   structure    that    acknowledges    allegiance    to 
Rome.     The  road  to  Rome  is  through  the  ballot  box.     The  road 
to   the   ballot-box  is  over  the  ruins  of   the  school-house.     The 
first  movement  is  a  division  of  the  school  moneys,  until  there  is 
a  majority  of  the  Pope's  voters;  when  that  majority  is  acquired, 
then  all  the  school  moneys;  then  priests  tor  teachers;  then  ban- 
ishment from  the  school-house  of   any  other  than  sectarian  or 
religious   education.     It   was   Pope   Gregory,  in  1831,  who  be- 
lieved that  the  "  Holy  Empire  "  would  be  established  in  America. 
It  was   Pope   Gregor}'  XVII.  who  said:     "Out  of    the    Roman 
States  there  is  no  country  where  I  am  Pope  except  in  America." 
It  was  Pius  IX.  who  denounced  liberty  of  conscience  and  wor- 
ship, and    who   declaimed  that  the  underlying  principles  of  our 
Government  are  pernicious  to  the  Papal  Church.     It  is  the  pres- 
ent Pope,  Leo  XIII.,  who  denounced  our  public  schools  as  im- 
moral and  godless.     It  was  Doctor  Orestes  Brownson,  an  Ameri- 
can Catholic,  who  declared  that  the  Pope  of  Rome,  as  the  visible 
head  of    the  Church,  was  entitled  to  supreme  civil  authority'  iu 
America. 


[47  ] 

We  do  not  need  to  be  told  by  Father  Gleeson  why  the  Church 
desires  to  have  school  moneys  appropriated  to  parochial  schools, 
or  why  he  would  provide  the  present  public  schools  with  Catholic 
teachers.  We  have  a  higher  and  better  authority.  To  prove 
our  two  positions — viz.,  that  the  Roman  Church  claims  for  the 
Papal  power  the  exercise  of  civil  authority  in  America,  and  that, 
to  gain  that  end,  it  would  subjugate  our  common  schools,  we  re- 
print from  "The  Encyclical "  those  articles  which  have  special 
bearing  upon  civil  government: 

XIX. — The  Romish  Church  has  the  right  to  exercise  its  au- 
thority, without  having  any  limit  set  to  it  by  the  civil  power. 

XXIV. — The  Romish  Church  has  a  right  to  avail  itself  of  force, 
and  to  use  the  temporal  power  for  that  purpose. 

XXVI. — The  Romish  Church  has  an  innate  and  legitimate  right 
to  acquire,  hold,  and  use  property,  without  limit. 

XXVII. — The  Pope  and  the  priests  ought  to  have  dominion 
over  the  temporal  affairs. 

XXX. — The  Romish  Church  and  her  ecclesiastics  have  a  right 
to  immunity  from  civil  law. 

XXXI. — The  Romish  'Clergy  should  be  tried  for  civil  and 
criminal  offences  only  in  ecclesiastical  courts. 

XXXIX. — The  people  are  not  the  sources  of  all  civil  power. 

XLII. — In  case  of  conflict  between  the  ecclesiastical  and  civil 
powers,  the  ecclesiastical  powers  ought  to  prevail 

XLV. — The  Romish  Church  has  the  right  to  interfere  in  the 
discipline  of  the  public  schools,  and  in  the  arrangemant  of  the 
studies  of.  the  public  schools,  and  in  the  choice  of  the  teachers 
for  these  schools. 

XLVir. — Public  schools,  open  to  all  children,  for  the  educa- 
tion of  the  young,  should  be  under  the  control  of  the  Romish 
Church,  should  not  be  subject  to  the  civil  power,  nor  be  made 
to  conform  to  the  opinions  of  the  age. 

XLVIII. — While  teaching  piously  the  knowledge  of  natural 
things,  the  public  schools  must  not  be  separated  from  the  faith 
and  power  of  the  Romish  Church. 

LIII. — The  civil  power  has  no  right  to  assist  persons  to  regain 
their  freedom  who  have  once  adopted  a  religious  life — that  is, 
become  priests,  monks,  or  nuns. 

LIV. — The  civil  power  is  inferior  and  subordinate  to  the  ec- 
clesiastical power,  and,  in  litigated  questions  of  jurisdiction, 
should  yield  to  it. 

LV. — Church  and  State  should  be  united. 

LXXVIII. — The  Roman  Catholic  religion  should  be  the  re- 
ligion of  the  State. 

This  discussion  properly  ends  here.  We  give  this— the  highest 
authority  of  the  Church  o"^f  Rome— in  proof  of  the  opening  as- 
sertion of  the  Argonaut's  first  article,  that  this  church,  with  all 
its  arrogant  and  impudent  claims,  is  "  siimper  endem."  It  would 
assume  to  itself  the  exercise  of  civil  power  in  America,  to  the 
destruction  of  iis  constitutional  authority,  the  overthrow  of  its 


[48] 

form  of  government,  and  the  defeat  of  the  accej)tecl  declaration 
of  our  organic  liiw,  that  all  civil  authority  comes  from  the  j)enj>le. 
It  would  unite  Church  and  State.  It  would,  having  gained  the 
authority  at  the  ballot-box,  enforce  it  with  the  hword.  The 
priest  would  be  above  the  njagistrate,  tlie  Church  aljove  the 
courts,  the  Pope  above  the  President,  and  every  idle,  snuff-takiug 
monk,  and  every  bigoted  and  ignorant  foreign  priest,  above  the 
law.  The  Church  would  coine  between  the  iiurent  and  child  in 
school  discipline.  The  school-books  would  be  ecclesiastical 
primers — as  formerly  in  France — filled  with  puerile  stories  of 
blessed  saints  and  holy  martyrs,  intermixed  with  Avf^Mariax  and 
Pater  Noslers,  and  other  superstitious  and  priestly  nonsense. 
Freedom  of  conscience  would  be  crushed  out  of  existence;  free- 
dom of  worship  would  be  no  longer  tolerated:  and  this  land  of 
ours  would  be  brought  to  the  condition  of  Europe  in  the  mediaeval 
age,  when  it  was  ruled  by  an  ignorant  priesthood,  in  subservience 
to  a  tyrannical  ecclesiasticism  that  kept  the  world  in  darkness 
for  ages.  Destroy  the  schools,  good  Father  Gleeson,  and  place 
them  under  the  domination  of  your  priests,  and  niight  we  not 
expect  the  condition  of  Sardinia  under  the  teaching  of  your 
Eoniish  clergy,  where  512,384  out  of  a  population  of  547,112  can 
neither  read  nor  write  ?  Or  might  we  not  look  for  the  condition 
of  solidly  pa^ml  Spain  ? — once  a  nation  of  universities  and 
splendid  learning;  once  a  nation  grand  in  the  enjoyment  and 
encouragement  of  art;  a  nation  of  conquerors,  adventurers,  dis- 
coverers, and  one  which  did  not  begin  to  decline  till  it  made  the 
interest  of  the  Church  paramount  to  all  other  rights,  and  made 
the  cross  the  emblem  of  cruelty  and  oppression  to  all  to  whom 
it  was  carried.  Out  of  sixteen  millions  of  people  in  Spain,  less 
than  three  millions  can  read  and  write.  "Would  not  our  country 
soon  resemble  Italy,  less  than  twenty  years  ago,  where  the  Church 
held  swa}' — as  it  had  for  centuries  of  time — and  where  out  of 
twenty-two  millions  of  people  more  than  seventeen  millions 
could  neither  read  nor  write  ?  In  the  Basilicata,  in  Calabria,  and 
in  Sicily,  nine-tenths  of  the  inhabitants  can  neither  read  nor 
write.  In  Rome,  the  capital  of  the  Papal  Church,  where  this 
vicegerent  of  God  sits  enthroned  amid  his  palaces  and  his  churches, 
and  w^here,  up  to  within  a  recent  period,  he  exercised  sovereign 
power  and  full  civil  authority,  the  densest  ignorance  and  the 
grossest  immorality  prevailed.*  We  may  not  consent,  honored 
and  reverend  sir,  to  allow  our  free  schools  to  come  under  the  con- 
trol of  your  Church,  until  we  are  convinced  that  in  those  countries 
•where  your  Church  holds  sway  you  can  show  better  results  than  in 
ours,  where,  thanks  to  God  aLd  to  our  system  of  education,  your 
Church  does  not  hold  sway.  Let  us  contrast  the  mass  of  the 
American  people,  for  intelligence,  education,  and  all  the  qualities 
which   go  to  the  formation  of  national  character,  with  Ireland, 


*  A  seuteuce  is  here  emitted,  beiug  too  grossly  vulgar  and  offeusive  to  evea 
common  decencj'. 


[49] 

where  your  Church  is  influential;  with  Mexico,  where  it  is  in 
authority;  with  the  province  of  Lower  Canada,  where  it  directs 
the  educational  system;  with  any  locality  or  community  on  the 
face  of  God's  earth.  We  challenge  you,  Father  Gleeson,  to 
name  the  one  spot  on  all  this  earth,  from  Rome  outward,  where 
the  Holy  Roman  Apostolic  Church  has  produced  equal  educa- 
tional results  with  our  free,  godless,  American  system.  For 
evidence  that  the  Papal  Church  is  exclusive,  and  that  whereso- 
ever it  has  power  it  uses  it  to  suppress  the  liberty  of  the  press, 
the  freedom  of  speech,  the  liberty  of  conscience  and  the  freedom 
of  worship,  we  are  not  compelled  to  grope  through  the  musty 
archives  of  the  past,  ransack  history,  or  depend  upon  hostile 
testimony  of  acknowledged  enemies  of  the  Church.  It  is  found 
in  encyclicals  from  the  Vatican,  and  in  the  official  utterances  of 
the  latest  Popes.  The  recorded  utterances  of  Pius  IX.  and  Leo 
XIII.,  are  full  of  hostile  denunciations  against  all  these  things, 
and  especially  against  unsectarian  education.  In  1851  the  Papal 
authorities  of  Tuscany  banished  Count  Quiciandini  for  having  a 
Bible  in  his  possession.  In  1852  the  papal  powers  of  Portugal 
decreed  imprisonment  and  fines  against  all  who  opposed  the 
Church.  In  1860  Manuel  Matamoras,  of  Spain,  was  sent  to  the 
galleys  for  eleven  years,  for  daring  to  preach  Protestantism.  In 
Belgium,  France,  Austria,  Italy,  German}',  Mexico,  and  the 
States  of  Central  America,  within  the  last  ten  years,  the  civil 
authorities  have  been  brought  into  unpleasant  collision  with  the 
j)apal  power,  not  in  reference  to  spiritual  matters  or  dogmas, 
^ut  because  of  the  interference  of  papal  priests  with  the  admin- 
istration of  civil  aflairs,  and  because  in  all  these  countries  the 
Church  has  been  restrained  in  its  endeavor  to  monopolize  the 
education  of  youth  The  incident  which  occurred  some  3'ears 
ago  in  Cambridgeport,  Massachusetts,  is  not  forgotten,  where 
Father  Scully  lashed  a  boy  to  blood-letting,  for  attending  a 
public  school,  and  not  his  parochial  school,  in  disobedience  of 
his  command;  nor  the  case  of  Father  Dufresne,  at  Holyoke, 
Massachusetts,  who  was  punished  by  the  law  for  attempting  to 
ruin  the  business  of  a  jjarishioner  for  a  similar  oft'ense.  There 
is  no  State  in  this  country  where  the  influence  of  the  entire 
Church  and  its  clergy  is  not  brought  to  bear  against  our  free- 
school  system.  The  Holy  Sacrament  has  been  withheld  in  Oak- 
land from  Catholic  parents  so  offending.  A  leading  jjapal 
journal,  the  Catholic  Wor/d,  has  denied  the  compcteuc}-  of  the 
State  to  educate,  or  to  say  what  shall  or  shall  not  be  taught  in 
the  public  schools.  It  repudiates  the  doctrine  that  education  is 
the  function  of  the  State.  The  doctrine  is  maintained  by  all 
good  Romanists,  and  by  all  Romish  priests,  good  or  bad,  that 
the  education  of  all  children  in  all  countries  and  at  all  times 
belongs  to  the  Romish  Church.  AVe  should  be  ghvd  if  tlie  scope 
of  this  article  enabled  us  to  print  the  absurd  nonsense  found  in 
church  school-books — the  perversion  of  history,  the  suppression 
of  facts  concerning  the  Church,  and  the  suggestion  of  falsehoods 


L  '50  J 

concerning  evcrvtliing  tliat  is  not  of  the  ('lunch.  We  should  be 
glad  if  we  had  space  to  compare  llonianisni  with  ProteKtantism 
in  its  results  in  other  lands.  There  is  a  multitude  of  questions 
which  we  should  be  glad  to  submit  to  our  reverend  disputant. 
How  do  the  three  hundred  and  eightj'-six  thousand  and  twenty- 
BBven  foreign-born  in  this  State,  most  of  whom  have  been  bora 
and  educated  in  the  Koman  Church,  com|)are  in  point  of  educa- 
tion and  morals  with  the  same  number  of  non-Cath(jlics  who 
have  been  educated  in  our  free  American  schools?  Of  the  three 
hundred  and  forty-six  foreign-born  committed  in  the  past  year 
to  our  Industrial  School,  and  of  the  additional  iiumber  born  of 
foreign  parents,  how  many  are  Romanists?  Of  the  five  hundred 
and  forty -three  admitted  to  our  Alms-house,  and  of  the  addi- 
tional number  born  of  foreign  parents,  how  many  are  Roman- 
ists ?  "We  puss  the  unfortunate  insane  at  Stockton  and  Napa, 
and  seek  to  make  no  argument  on  the  fact  that  the  foreign -born 
outnumber  the  native-born.  There  are  sixty-nine  girls  in  the 
Magdalen  Asylum,  maintained  at  the  city's  expense;  what  part 
of  them  are  of  Roman  Church  and  parochial  school  education  ? 
The  statistics  of  our  jails  and  places  of  criminal  detention  we 
commend  to  the  careful  analysis  of  good  Father  Gleeson.  Let 
him  review  the  statistics  of  crime,  poverty,  intemperance,  and 
the  misfortunes  arising  from  intemperance,  and  from  the  sale  of 
intoxicating  liquors,  by  the  nominal  members  of  his  Church, 
that  we  may  see  what  figure  they  cut  in  comparing  the  results 
which  come  from  Protestantism,  infidelity,  and  non-sectarian 
education  with  those  which  come  from  parochial  schools  and  the 
relififion  of  Rome. 


Our  discussion  having  taken  this  broad  range,  we  shall  admit 
that  we  are  wrong  in  saying  that  it  was  unprofitable,  and  Father 
Gleeson  was  right  in  his  endeavor  to  give  it  so  broad  a  sweejD. 
No  danger  can  arise  to  our  institutions  from  the  opposition  of 
the  Church  of  Rome,  so  long  as  it  is  open.  No  evil  can  come 
to  our  free  system  of  education  from  the  Papal  Church  or  papal 
priest,  so  long  as  the  contest  is  maintained  in  daylight,  and  by 
alignments  so  frank  as  those  of  Father  Gleeson.  "SVe  look  ujdou 
the  school-house,  not  as  built  upon  a  rock,  but  as  the  rock  itself, 
and  we  have  no  fear  concerning  it  if  we  can  keep  the  plotters  of 
this  Romish  Church  from  using  the  secret  drill  and  dynamite. 
Neither  the  gates  of  hell  nor  St.  Peter  can  prevail  against  it,  so 
long  as  tree  discussion  in  a  free  press  is  permitted  to  free  men. 
It  was  the  Catholic  Vicar  of  Croydon  who  said  we  must  root  out 
printing,  or  printing  will  root  us  out.  We  hope  Father  Gleeson 
will  see  how  impertinent  to  this  discussion  was  his  very  question- 
able allusion  to  our  infidelity,  and  ap]:)reciate  that  it  is  of  little 
consequence  to  the  writer  or  anybody  else  what  he  may  presume 
to  think  are  our  opinions  upon  religious  questions.  We  shall  be 
pleased  at  some  future  time  to  discuss  with  the  most  excellent 


r  51] 

and  pious  cleroymen  of  the  Church  of  Rome  the  moral  character 
of  those  who  have  worn  its  scarlet,  filled  its  papal  chair,  and 
who,  as  primates,  legates,  cardinals,  bishops,  and  priests,  have 
been  clothed  with  its  power,  and  compare  their  inner  lives  and 
their  conduct  with  those  of  the  most  notorious  infidels  of  the 
world.  If  opposition  to  the  assumption  of  aivil  authority  by 
the  Church  of  Rome,  and  its  interference  in  the  administration 
of  the  Government  of  the  United  States  of  America,  or  the 
claim  of  it,  or  any  other  ecclesiastical  institution,  to  meddle 
with  the  American  free-school  system,  or  the  refusal  to  admit 
that  it  has,  or  ought  to  have,  any  other  or  higher  recognition  by 
our  Grovernment  than  has  the  Buddhist,  or  that  the  Po]>e  has  any 
other  or  higher  claim  to  be  considered  the  vicegerent  of  God 
than  has  the  white  bull  of  India — if  all  this  be  infidelity,  we 
confess  it;  not  to  you,  good  Father  Gleeson,  in  whom  we  i-ecog- 
nize  no  authority  to  give  remission  of  our  sins,  but  to  the  Ar- 
gonaut readers,  to  whom,  for  the  pi'esent,  we  submit  this,  we 
hope,  not  uninteresting  or  unprofitable  discussion. 


[Frovi  the  Argonaut,  April  14.] 

Father  Gleeson  complains  that  having  invited  him  to  discuss 
the  question  of  our  common  schools,  we  have  attacked  his  church. 
Exactly,  that  is  just  what  Ave  have  done;  that  was  our  object  in 
opening  up  the  controversy.  Fnther  Gleeson  claims  a  division 
of  school  moneys — public  money,  our  mone}',  everybody's  money 
— for  the  purpose  of  paying  Romanists  to  teach  the  Romish  or 
papal  religion  in  our  schools.  We  kick,  because  we  do  not 
want  the  Pope's  religion  or  the  Pope's  politics  to  be  taught  in 
our  schools.  "NVe  think  the  Church  of  Rome  is  a  conspiracy 
against  the  republican  government  in  this  country.  We  think 
the  Pope's  politics  are  subversive  of  our  institutions.  We  think 
the  church  is  a  dangerous  institution,  and  its  teachings  inimical 
and  destructive  to  liberty,  freedom  of  conscience,  and  everything 
that  intelligent,  and  honorable,  and  free  men  ought  to  hold 
sacred.  To  allow  the  doctrines — we  mean  the  spiritual  dogmas 
— of  the  Romish  Church  to  be  taught  in  our  schools  and  followed 
to  their  legitimate  conclusions  by  as  honored  and  subtle  a  teacher 
as  our  able  disputant  would  be,  if  he  were  detailed  from  the 
pulpit  to  become  a  school-master,  would  educate  the  rising  youth 
of  America  in  doctrines  utterly  at  variance  with  the  theory  of 
our  government,  and  destructive  of  its  fundamental  principles. 
When  father  Gleeson  complains  that  we  had  no  right  to  attack 
his  church,  we  answer  that  that  is  the  very  point  of  this  contro- 
versy. If  the  Church  of  Rome  is  what  Father  Gleeson  thinks 
it — and  conscientiously  believes  it  to  be— then  it  ought  to  be 
taught  everywhere.  If  the  Protestant  religion  is  the  hateful 
and  wicked  abomination  which  Father  Gleesju — conscientiously 


Lo2  J 

— tbinks  it  to  be,  it  ougbt  to  be  ta\igbt  uowLmo,  jiiul  eudined 
llo^Ybere.  If  iiifidele — tbat  is,  evcrybcfly  ^\ho  is  not  a  Eoinauist 
— are  the  abominable  creatures  ■wliicb  every  ignorant  and  bigoted 
slave  of  liome  thinks  them  to  lie,  then  they  oiiglit  not  to  be 
tolerated.  Ihat  is  the  Gleeson  side  of  tliis  discussion.  Eut  if 
Eomc  is  the  utterly  abominable  and  ^vickfd  institution  that  we— 
conscientiously — believe  it  to  be,  then  we  would  keep  its  doc- 
trines from  being  taught  in  our  public  schools.  "NVe  would  not 
take  Catholic  money  to  teach  Protetsantism.  "We  would  not 
take  Catholic  nor  Protestant  money  to  teach  infidelity.  We 
would  have  our  children  taught  reading,  writing,  sjjelling,  arith- 
metic, geography,  history,  and  natural  sciences.  We  would  Lave 
them  taught  all  those  things  that  would  make  them  self  reliant 
in  their  opinions.  We  would  not  have  history  distorted,  nor 
scientific  tacts  withheld,  in  aid  of  the  Church  of  Eome.  We 
would  have  our  American  boys  and  girls  understand  that  the 
Pope  of  Eome  has  just  as  much  right  to  interfere  in  American 
politics — and  no  greater— as  any  other  Italian  ecclesiastic;  that 
he  is  just  as  infallible  iru  matters  of  civil  government,  and  no 
more  so,  than  any  other  person  who  has  the  same  amount  of 
political  experience,  education,  common  sense,  and  moral  char- 
acter. We  would  have  them  know  that  he  is  just  as  much  the 
vicar  of  Jesus  Christ,  just  as  much  the  vicegerent  of  God,  and 
has  just  as  much  to  do  with  the  keys  of  heaven,  and  the  plan  of 
salvation,  and  authority  to  remit  sins  and  dispense  indulgences, 
as  any  other  priest  or  bishoj),  and  no  more;  that  he  has  no  sort 
of  authority,  human  or  divine,  for  the  exercise  of  any  civil  au- 
thority, or  any  interference  with  the  institutions,  laws,  courts, 
lands,  or  educational  institutions  in  America,  and  that  all  pre- 
text of  such  authority  by  himself  is  an  insolent  assertion  of  ec- 
clesiastical impudence  not  to  be  endured  or  tolerated  b}-  the  Ameii- 
can  people;  that  the  upholding  of  such  an  idea^  or  the  promul- 
gation of  it,  or  the  giving  to  it  any  sort  of  countenance  by  any 
sort  of  indirection,  by  any  cardinal,  archbishop,  bishop  iii  porti- 
hvi<,  priest  in  robes,  jDriest  in  nvbibvi^,  or  lawman,  journalist 
school-master,  cr  anybody  else,  under  any  circumstances  what- 
ever, in  any  place  in  America,  is  treason  to  our  Government 
So  believing,  we  say  to  Father  Gleeson  and  his  Church:  keep 
your  hands  out  of  our  school  funds,  and  keej)  your  ecclesi 
astical  politics  away  frcm  the  education  of  cur  boys  and  girls. 


FATHER  GLEESON'S  FINAL  REJOINDER. 


PixLEY's  Disingenuous  Methods  of  Controversy  Shown  up. 


Th?  Syllabus  Mistaken  f  jr  an  Encyclical  and  Argued  by  the  Rules  of  Contraries. 


Editor  Post:  Wheu  I  replied  to  the  editor  of  the  Argonaut, 
some  weeks  ago,  through  your  columns,  I  did  not  then  think  I 
would  be  called  on  to  take  any  further  notice  of  anything  Mr. 
Pixley  might  afterwards  deem  proper  to  say  in  regard  to  the 
common  school  question.  Indeed,  I  even  said  I  would  not.  In 
liis  last  issue,  however,  that  geratleman  has  made  so  many  and 
such  serious  charges  against  the  Catholic  Church  that  I  feel  an 
answer  is  called  for.  I  do  not  charge  Mr.  Pixley  with  knowingly 
and  willfully  misrepresenting  the  Catholic  Church.  This  I  at- 
tribute entirely  to  a  mental  Aveakness  over  which  he  seems  to 
"have  no  control,  and  consequently  I  regard  him  as  more  to  be 
•commiserated  than  censured.  In  most  respects,  indeed,  ]\Ir, 
Pixley's  mind  seems  perfectly  rational,  but,  in  the  matter  of  the 
■Church  of  Rome,  and  her  religious  teachings  and  societies,  he  is 
manifestly  beside  himself,  and  is  laborini?  under  a  deplorable 
hallucination.  In  fact,  the  Roman  Pontifl',  the  Catholic  clergy, 
aid  the  Jesuit  Society  in  particular,  are  his  "bHenoir."  In 
these  he  sees  nothing  but  darkness,  treachery  and  malevolence. 
Doubtless  they  disturb  his  tranquility  by  day  and  his  repose  by 
night,  and  mayhap  seriously  interfere  with  his  editorial  labors. 

That  a  man  like  Mr.  Pixley  should  be  the  victim  of  such  an 
liallucinatiou;  that  he  should  be  sound  on  all  other  points  but 
•one,  is  nothing  to  be  wondered  at,  for  history  furiiishes  us 
numerous  instances  of  this  kind.  Many  of  us  have  heard  of  the 
^French  philosopher  who  imagined  he  had  a  gigot,  or  leg  of  mut- 
ton, attached  to  his  nose!  In  vain  did  his  friends  assure  him 
that  there  was  no  such  appendage  there;  that  it  was  alia  delusion 
oti  his  part;  that  he  had  nothing  of  the  kind  such  as  he  imagined, 
and  that,  in  this  respect,  he  was  like  the  rest  of  mortals.  To  all 
these  assertions,  however,  he  would  gravely  reply:  "  But  you 
are  mistaken;  I  know  I  have  a  gigot;  I  can  see  it,  and  feel  it, 
and  smell  it."  In  like  manner,  with  as  little  profit,  do  we  tell 
the  genial  editor  of  the  Argonaul  that  we  don't  want  to  destroy 
the  public  schools  of  this  country,  that  we  have  no  objection  to 
.those  using  them  who  think  well  of  them,  aud  that  all  we  want 


[51] 

is  to  do  more  for  our  cliiklren  than  is  being  clone  for  them  at 
present.  To  nil  this  lie  answers,  like  tlie  philosopher  with  the 
muJ,tou  stuck  to  his  no.se:  "  1  know  you  are  deceivers,  1  know 
you  lire  not  telling  the  truth,  iintl  1  know  tliiit  your  only  aim  und 
object  is  to  destroy  our  educntion  and  our  country;  "  and  ho  this 
perversion  ot  our  position  is  really  the  editor  of  the  Argonuul'a 
cjiyot. 

Ag-ain,  where  is  the  person  who  has  not  heard  of  the  unfortunate 
victim  of  hallucination  who  inuigined  he  had  a  cobbler  in  his 
stomach  ?  No  amount  of  reasoning  on  the  part  of  his  friends 
could  possibly  persuade  him  to  the  contrary,  for  to  all  their 
assertions  lie  would  answer  that  he  felt  him  and  heard  him;  and 
it  was  only  b}'  an  artifice  that  he  was  relieved  of  his  affliction. 
Knowing  iiow  futile  it  would  be  to  reason  with  so  demented  an 
individual,  his  well-wishers  wisely  resolved  to  humor  him  in  his 
madness,  and  to  this  end  ostensibly  agreed  with  him,  that  veri- 
tably a  cobbler  he  had,  and  that  the  only  question  to  be  con- 
sidered was  how^  the  intruder  could  be  eti'ectually  dislodged. 
Accordingly,  a  consultation  was  had  with  a  learned  disciple  of 
Esculapius,  and  it  was  resolved  that  a  process  of  ejectment,  in 
the  shape  of  an  emetic,  should  be  immediately  served  on  the  man 
of  leather,  and  the  cause  of  the  trouble  removed.  To  this  the 
unfortunate  sufferer  gladly  assented,  and,  when  the  prescription 
had  accomplished  its  work, a  sou  of  Crispin,  who  had  been  I'etained 
for  the  occasion,  presently  made  his  appearance,  and  the  poor 
sufferer's  mental  equilibrium  was  immediately  restored.  The 
cobbler  was  expelled.  I  don't  know  Avhether  a  like  remedy  could 
be  applied  with  equal  success  in  the  case  of  the  editor  of  the 
Argonaut,  for  it  is  a  question  whether  his  hallucination  is  of  the 
sort  that  makes  him  imagine  that  he  carries  within  him  the  whole 
lioman  Church  and  the  Jesuit  Order  to  boot,  or  whether  he  is 
only  haunted  by  phantasies  of  the  wickedness  and  machinations 
of  the  Church  and  her  agents.  Anyhow,  to  attempt  to  reason 
with  him  on  the  subject  of  the  common  schools  of  this  country 
would  be  as  bootless  a  task  as  to  reason  with  the  philosopher  or 
the  victim  of  the  cobbler,  of  whom  I  have  just  spoken.  Apart, 
too,  from  all  mental  aberration,  the  inconsistency  of  Mr.  Pixley's 
character  would  render  discussion  with  him  an  impracticability, 
for  what  he  says  to  day  he  will  deny  to-morrow  aud  unsay  the 
day  after.  For  instance,  when  he  invited  me  to  discussion  he 
said,  as  the  reader  may  remember,  that  the  school  question  was  a 
profitable  subject  for  discussion;  then  he  denied  this,  aud  said  it 
was  unprotitable;  and  now,  in  his  last  weeks  issue,  he  retvunsto 
the  old  idea  and  acknowledges  that  the  discussion  would  be 
profitable.  How  is  a  man  of  this  kind  to  be  regarded  ?  By 
what  standard  are  we  to  judge  his  character  ?  It  surely  is  not 
creditable  to  a  man  to  play  the  "  Jump  Jim  Crow  "  in  this  style 
in  his  paper.  People  like  consistency,  and  nothing  makes  a 
man  more  ridiculous  than  a  constant  change  of  sentiment. 
Hence,  that  very  judicious  and  elegant  writer,  Addison,  has  very 


[55] 

aptly  remarked  that  nothing  that  is  not  a  real  crime  makes  a  man 
so  little  in  the  eyes  of  the  world  as  a  constant  change  of 
opinion. 

It  was  precisely  some  such  character  as  the  editor  of  the 
Argonaut  that  the  old  Roman  poet  Horace  had  in  his  eye  when 
he  penned  his  humorous  lines  on  Tigellius: 

"  Nil  feqnale  homini  fuit  illi.     Sa?pe  veliit  qui 
Currebat  fugiens  hostem;  pers;pi)e  velut  qui 
Junouis  sacia  ferret;  habebat  sajpe  chiceutos 
iSfepe  decern  servos;  modo  reges  atque  tetrai'chas, 
Omnia  roagua  loqiieus;  modo,  "Sitmilii  mensa  tripes 
Concha  salis  pnri  et  toga,  qii<e  defenders  frigus, 
Quamvis  crassa,  qneat."     Decies  centeua  dedisses 
Hiiic  i^arco,  paucis  conteuto,  quiuqiu;  diebns 
Nil  erat  in  locnlis.     Noctcs  vigilabat  ad  ipsum 
Mane;  diem  totum  stertebat.     Nil  fuit  uuquam 
Sic  impar  sibi." 

"  There  was  nothing  uniform  in  the  fellow's  character.  Fre- 
quently he  would  run  as  if  flying  from  an  enemy,  while  again  he 
would  stalk  solemnly  on  as  if  he  were  bearing  in  procession  the 
sacrifices  of  Juno.  Oftentimes  he  had  two  hundred  slaves,  and 
just  as  often  onl}'  ten.  Now  he  would  talk  of  kings  and  potentates 
and  everything  grand,  and  the  next  moment  his  conversation 
would  be  about  a  three-legged  table,  a  salt-cellar  and  a  coarse 
garment  to  defend  him  from  the  cold.  If  you  gave  him  ten 
hundred  thousand  sesterces,  though  contented  with  so  little,  in 
five  da3^s  he  would  have  nothing  left.  He  sat  up  all  night  and 
snored  all  da}'.  In  a  word,  never  was  anything  so  inconsistent 
with  itself." 

This  is  Mr.  Pixley,  as  Horace  drew  him.  Now  let  us  see  him 
as  Dryden  painted  him.  In  my  opinion  the  latter's  description 
is  more  perfect.     It  is  more  to  life: 

"  In  the  first  rank  of  these  did  Zimri  stand; 

A  man  so  various  that  he  seemed  to  be 

Not  one,  but  all  mankind's  e])itome. 

Stiff  in  opinions,  always  in  the  icronij! 

Was  everything  by  starts,  and  nothing  long; 

Biit,  in  the  course  of  one  revolving  moon. 

Was  Chemist,  Fiddler,  Statesman  and  Buffoon; 

Then  all  for  women,  painting,  rhyming,  drinking. 

Besides  ten  thousand  freaks  that  died  in  thinking. 

Blest  madman,  who  could  every  hour  employ 

With  something  new  to  wish  or  to  enjoy." 

Mr.  Pixley  seems  to  have  felt  a  good  deal  my  allusion  to  his 
religious  convictions.  He  certainly  is  not  pleased  with  beiug 
denominated  an  infidel.  Now,  while  I  would  be  sorry  to  offer 
any,  even  the  slightest,  offense  to  the  editor  of  the  Anjoiuiul,  I 
must  acknowledge  I  cannot  see  how  any  allusions  to  him  as  an 
unbeliever  could  be  reasonably  regarded  as  offensive.  Surely  a 
man  ought  not  to  be  ashamed  of  his  principles,  or  abashed  at 
his  origin.  It  is  a  great  weakness  to  blush  at  one's  ancestry.  If 
Mr.  Pixley  does  not  believe  in  the  existence  of  an  Omnipotent 


[  ;1G  ] 

C'reutor,  and  IioUIk  that  his  forefather  was  tlio  jnlhrcoiJ  luiui,  or 
that  he  is  descended  from  tlie  ralnrrhinf.  ajji-s,  or  from  a  /y.o/o- 
plnsin,  or  ainouad — a  wore  of  chjhs  between  a  jflly  fisli  and  a  lump 
of  mud — I  don't  precisely  see  why  he  shcmlcl  be  ashanifd  to  avow 
that,  or,  as  an  inlidel,  to  take  ofVense  at  beim,'  called  by  hiw 
pro[)er  name.  Certainly,  I  feel  no  umbraf,'e  at  any  one  calling 
me  a  Catholic  priest.  On  the  contrary,  I  am  proud  of  it.  If, 
however,  Mr.  Pixley  woukl  be  better  ])leased  to  Ije  called  a 
Protestant  than  an  intidel,  thoug'h  he  denies  God  and  heaven  and 
hell,  I  will  call  him  the  former,  though  I  must  acknowledge  that 
up  to  the  present  I  was  of  opinion  it  would  be  a  i)crversion  of 
the  term  to  apply  it  to  men  of  Mr.  Pixley's  views;  but  anything, 
of  course,  to  i^iease. 

I  noAv  come  to  the  objectionable  points  in  the  Arg(nutut\s  last 
article.  Of  course,  for  all  who  are  aware  of  the  hallucination 
under  which  the  editor  is  laboring,  in  the  matter  of  the  Catholic 
Church,  no  explanation,  such  as  I  am  now  going  to  (jtfer,  would 
be  at  all  needed;  but  the  difficulty  is,  that  many,  ])eing  ignorant 
of  this,  and  knowing  the  Arfjonaxf  to  be  sane  on  all  ordinary 
matters,  never  for  a  moment  suspect  that  his  mind  is  upset  on 
this  particular  point,  and  hence  the  damage  that  his  writings  are 
calculated  to  do.  And  as  to  any  one  saying  that  his  sanity  is 
evident  from  the  fact  of  his  writings  being  witty  and  racy,  I  have 
only  to  reply  that  the  most  unfortunate  and  atiiicted  of  Bedlam- 
ites are  oftentimes  capable  of  saying  the  wittiest  and  most  humoi*- 
ous  things.  Only  lately  I  heard  of  an  observation  made  by  a 
lunatic  to  one  who  was  commissioned  to  look  after  his  interests. 
Eying  attentively  his  mentor,  who  was  not  over-remarkable  for 
any  extraordinary  intelligence  or  brilliancy  of  genius,  he  quietly 
remarked:  "  But  couldn't  our  master  have  found  any  one  but  a 
fool  to  take  care  of  a  fool?"  It  won't  mend  matters,  then,  or 
establish  Mr.  Pixley's  sanity,  to  aver  that  he  is  a  man  of  wit  and 
l^arts,  for  Avitticism  and  humor  may  euumate  even  from  a  dis- 
turbed brain.  But  the  proofs  of  his  aberration  will  be  better 
appreciated  by  the  reader  as  I  quote  from  his  writing.  In  the 
article  I  have  referred  to  above,  he  says  that  the  Roman  Catholic 
Church  is  the  enemj'  of  Republican  Cxoverument,  and  hostile  to 
the  liberties  of  the  people.  To  show  the  insanity  of  this,  I  will 
merely  propose  this  conundrum  to  Mr.  Pixley — namely,  how  it 
is,  if  his  allegation  be  true  that  the  oldest  Republics  in  the  world 
are  Catholic,  and  have  been  preserved  -by  Catholicism.  This 
looks  like  a  paradox,  but  as  the  editor  of  the  Argonaul  is  a  man 
of  paradoxes  he  may,  perchance,  be  able  to  explain  this.  The 
Republics  of  Andorra  and  San  Mai'ino  were  hundreds  of  years  in 
existence  before  the  existence  of  this  country  as  a  Republican 
Nation  was  heard  of.  The  former  was  founded  over  a  thousand 
years  ago  by  a  Catholic  bishop,  and  the  latter  by  a  Catholic 
monk.  Of  San  Marino  an  able  Protestant  writer  wrote  some 
years  ago  in  the  New  York  Tribune  as  follows: 

"Truth  compels  us  to  add  that  the  oldest  Republic  now  exist- 
ing is   that   of   San   Marino,  not   only  Catholic   but  wholly  sur- 


[57  J 

rounded  by  the  especial  dominion  of  the  Popes,  who  might  have 
crushed  it  like  au  e.og-.shell  at  any  time  these  last  thousand  years, 
but  they  didn't.  The  only  Republic  Ave  ever  traveled  in  besides 
our  own  is  Switzerland;  half  of  its  cantons  or  States  entirely 
Catholic,  yet  never  that  we  have  heard  of  unfaithful  to  the  cause 
of  freedom.  They  were  nearly  all  Roman  Catholics  from  the 
southern  cantons  of  Switzerland,  whom  Austria  so  ruthlessly 
expelled  from  Lombardy  after  the  suppression  of  the  last  revolt 
in  Milan,  accounting  them  natural-born  republicans  and  i-evo- 
iutionists;  and  we  suppose  Austria  is  not  a  know-nothing  on 
this  point.  We  never  heard  the  Catholics  of  Hungary  accused 
of  backwardness  in  the  late  glorious  struggle  of  their  country 
for  freedom,  though  its  leaders  were  Protestants,  fighting 
against  a  leading  Catholic  power  avowedly  in  favor  of  religious 
as  well  as  civil  libert3^  And  chivalric,  unhappj'  Poland,  almost 
wholly  Catholic,  has  made  as  gallant  a  struggle  for  freedom  as 
any  other  nation,  while  of  the  three  despotisms  that  crushed  her 
"but  one  was  Catholic." 

I  wonder  what  will  Mr.  Pixley  say  to  that.  I  leave  it  to  him, 
then,  to  explain  this  puzzle,  how,  if  the  Catholic  Church  is,  as 
he  says,  the  deadly  and  sworn  enemy  of  republican  government, 
she  has  yet  established  and  pi'eserved  the  same  ?  I  know  there 
are  some  things  that  go  by  contraries,  and  cannot  be  explained 
by  any  law.  The  ducks  of  Boetia  are  an  example  of  this,  for  it 
is  said  that  they  fatten  upon  what  is  destruction  to  their  species 
in  every  other  part  of  the  globe.  It  is,  I  suj^pose,  on  the  same 
principle  that  the  doctrines  of  the  Catholic  Church  are  hostile 
to  republicanism  in  one  place,  and  favorable  to  it  in  another. 

To  all  sane  men,  of  course,  I  need  not  say  that  there  is  not  one 
single  doctrine  of  Catholicism  that  is  in  any  way  hostile  to  the 
spirit  of  republican  liberty.  On  the  contrary,  the  very  consti- 
tution of  the  Church  itself  is  more  democratic  and  republican 
than  regal  or  monarchical.  For  just  as  any  man  in  this  country 
may  aspire  to  the  highest  position  in  the  land,  so  in  the  Catholic 
Church  the  road  is  open  to  all  from  the  lowest  to  the  highest 
jjosition  if  a  man  only  have  virtue  and  brains.  How  often  has 
not  this  been  illustrated  in  the  history  of  the  past,  for  in  how 
many  instances  haue  not  men  been  raised  from  the  huml»lest 
walks  of  life,  grade  by  grade,  until  they  were  even  called  upon 
to  fill  the  position  of  Sovereign  Pontiff. 

A^ain,  when  or  where  has  an  occasion  called  for  the  loyalty 
and  support  of  the  people  of  this  country,  in  defense  of  rebub- 
lican  principles,  in  which  the  Catholics  have  not  taken  a  promi- 
nent part,  and  shown  themselves  to  advantage.  Ha^e  not  the 
names  of  Catholics  been  prominent  in  all  the  great  battles  that 
were  fought  for  the  attainment  of  National  Independence  ?  and 
was  it  not  at  the  conclusion  of  tlie  war  of  Indeiiendence  that 
the  following  words,  forming  a  portion  ot  a  congratulatory  ad- 
dress, pi-esented  to  the  immortal  Washington,  and  signed  on  be- 
half of  the  Catholics  of  the  country  by  Bishop  Carroll  of  Balti- 


[58] 

more,  were  adilressecl  to  the  first  President  of  the  United  States: 
"  Tnis  prospect  of  national  prosjjerity  is  peculiarly  pleasing' to 
us  on  another  account,  because  whilst  our  country  preserves  her 
freedom  and  independence,  we  shall  liave  a  well-founded  title  to 
claim  from  her  justice,  equal  ri^'hts  of  citizenship,  an  tlv  price  of 
oar  hlood  spiU  iiu({f;r  i/ot(r  eijrs,  and  of  our  common  exertions  for 
her  defense  under  your  auspicious  conduct;  rifjhts  rendered 
more  dear  to  us  by  the  remembrance  of  former  hardships."  To 
this,  the  Father  of  his  Country  answered  in  a  manner  worthy  of 
his  exalted  character:  "I  hope  ever  to  see  America  amonf^  the 
foremost  nations  in  examples  of  justice  and  liberality;  but  I  pre- 
sume that  your  fellow  citizens  will  not  forget  the,  patriotic  part 
which  you  took  in  the  accomplisJimcnt  of  their  revolution,  and  the  es- 
tablishment of  their  government,  or  the  important  assUftayice  they  re- 
ceived from  a  nation  in  which  the  Roman  Catholic  faith  ix  pro- 
fessed." 

It  is  a  little  too  late  in  the  day,  then,  to  be  told  that  the  Catholic 
Church  is  hostile  to  the  principles  and  aims  of  republican  gov- 
ernment. 

Again,  the  editor  of  the  Argonaut  in  his  late  remarkable  utter- 
ances has  recklessly  asserted  that  the  Sovereign  Pontiff  claims 
to  be  the  source  and  fountain  of  all  political  power.  Here  is  the 
insane  sentence:  "It  is  the  doctrine  of  the  Church  of  Rome 
that  its  spiritual  head  is  clothed  with  all  political  power,  and 
that  his  civil  authority  should  be  recognized  throughout  the 
world."  A  more  untruthful  assertion  than  this  I  think  I  have 
never  read.  By  this  I  do  not  mean  to  say  that  Mr.  Pixley  is 
moi'ally  guilty  of  makiug  this  atrocious  statement,  for  moral 
guilt  supposes  the  active  use  of  reason — a  faculty  which  Mr. 
Pixley  certainly  does  not  possess  where  there  is  question  of  the 
Church  of  Rome.  But  lest  any  one  might  suppose  that  I  am 
not  conversant  with  the  true  doctrine  of  the  Church  in  this  par- 
ticular, I  will  here  quote  from  a  rescript  sent  from  Rome  to  the 
Bishops  of  Ireland  in  1791:  "We  must  carefully  distinguish 
between  the  real  rights  of  the  Apostolic  See  and  what  have  been, 
with  an  inimical  intention  in  modern  times,  imputed  to  it.  The 
Roman  See  has  never  taught  that  faith  was  not  to  be  kept  with 
'  heretics,'  or  that  an  oath  of  allegiance  made  to  kings  in  a  state 
of  separation  from  a  Catholic  community  could  be  broken,  or 
that  it  wati  allowable  for  a  Pope  to  interfere  with  their  temporal  rights 
and  possessio)is." 

I  must  now  call  the  attention  of  the  reader  to  the  most 
serious  charges  in  the  article  I  refer  to.  With  an  apparent  can- 
dor and  frankness  which  would  mislead  any  one  not  acquainted 
with  Mr.  Pixley's  character  and  tactics,  that  gentleman  laid  be- 
fore his  readers  in  his  last  issue  a  certain  number  of  propo- 
sitions which  he  had  the  temerity  to  declare  were  taken  from  a 
Roman  encyclical.  Perhaps  not  one  in  ten  of  his  readers  ever 
imagined  that  the  pro^iositions  were  other  than  as  he  stated 
them.     For  when  a  man  of  position  and  character  comes  before 


[59] 

the  community  and  affirms  unreservedly  that  in  such  and  such  a 
document  such  and  such  proi:)ositions  are  to  he  found,  giving  at 
the  same  time  the  woi-ding  and  number  of  the  propositions,  the 
plain,  irresistible  conclusion  is  that  the  propositions  assigned 
are  to  be  found  in  the  wording  and  order  set  forth.  No  man, 
taking  for  granted  the  honesty  of  the  writer,  could  come  to  any 
other  possible  conclusion  than  that.  What,*  then,  will  be  the 
surprise  of  the  readers  of  the  Post  when  I  assure  them  that  not 
one  of  the  projiositions  given  by  Mr.  Pixley  has  ever  ap])eared 
in  any  encyclical  issued  by  any  of  the  Koman  Pontitis.  He  has 
concocted  them  in  this  style:  In  the  syllabus,  which  he  has  mis- 
taken for  an  encyclical,  there  are  eighty  condemned  propo- 
sitions, the  contradictories  of  which,  by  perversion,  may  be 
made  to  imply  something  like  what  Mr.  Pixley  attributes  to 
them.  But  that  the  reader  may  see  how  completely  the  Argonaut 
has  misrepresented  the  Catholic  Church  in  this  particular,  I  will 
here  place  in  juxtaposition  the  propositions  as  given  by  the 
Argonaut,  and  as  they  stand  in  the  syllabus.  Thus,  the  3*Jth 
proposition,  as  quoted  by  Mr.  Pixley,  runs  thus:  "  The  people 
are  not  the  source  of  all  civil  power."  This,  he  tells  his  readers, 
is  found  in  the  encyclical,  which,  as  I  have  said,  he  mistakes  for 
syllabus.  But  now,  what  is  the  fact?  The  actual  proposition 
is  this:  "  The  State,  as  being  the  origin  and  source  of  all  riglits, 
is  endowed  with  a  certain  right  not  circumscribed  by  any  limits." 
This  is  the  proposition  that  was  condemned,  and  it  must  be 
quite  plain  to  the  reader  that  its  contradictory  is  nothing  of  the 
kind  that  Mr.  Pixley  would  make  it.  There  is  a  vast,  a  world- 
wide difference  between  saying  the  right  of  the  State  is  circum- 
scribed by  certain  limits,  and  that  the  people  are  not  the  source 
of  all  civil  power.  Both  do  not  express  the  same  thing.  They 
are  different  expressions,  and  none  but  a  dolt  or  a  lunatic  could 
possibly  imagine  they  did. 

It  is  too  bad,  indeed,  that  any  man  in  the  community  should 
thus  attempt  to  impose  on  the  credulity  of  his  fellow-men;  it 
speaks  very  badly,  both  for  the  honesty  of  the  writer  and  the  in- 
telligence of  the  readers,  who  are  supposed  to  be  ready  to  accept 
such  untruths.  I  ask,  then,  and  I  think  I  may  ask  with  the 
greatest  propriety,  why  the  editor  of  the  Argonaut  has  thus  at- 
tempted to  bamboozle  his  patrons  in  this  fashion  ?  Has  he  no 
sense  of  honor  or  veracity  left  ?  It  was  once  humorously  said  by 
an  eccentric  member  of  the  British  Parliament,  that  a  certain  in- 
dividual never  opened  his  mouth  but  he  put  his  foot  in  it.  The 
same,  I  think,  may  be  said  with  the  greatest  truth  of  the 
editoi-  of  the  Argonaut.  Whenever  he  speaks  of  the  Catholic 
Church,  he  is  ever  sure  to  put  his  foot  in  it,  and  oftentimes  very 
deep  in  the  mud  too. 

Again,  Mr.  Pixley  gives  the  twenty-seventh  proposition  of  the 
syllabus 'as  this:  "  The  Pope  and  the  priests  ought  to  have  do- 
minion over  the  temporal  affairs."  O,  shameful  perversion  of 
truth!     Old  Harry  himself    couldn't  possibly  improve  on  that. 


[60] 

Is  there  no  such  command  as  "  thou  shalt  not  bear  falwe  witness 
af^ainst  thy  neif^hbor?"  But  why  speak  of  conimandH  to  a  man 
who  denies  the  existence  of  the  Clud  of  the  commands?  "The 
Pope  and  the  priests  ouglit  to  have  dominion  over  the  temporal 
affairs!  "  A  more  cunning,'  and  assiduous  attempt  at  making  the 
reader  believe  that  the  Church's  ambition  is  to  claim  a  supre- 
macy over  the  State  in  temporal  matters,  I  think  1  have  never 
been  able  to  discover.  But  what  is  the  real  i)roposition  as  g^iven 
in  the  syllabus?  "  The  sacred  ministers  of  the  Church  and  the 
Roman  Pontiff  are  to  be  absolutely  excluded  from  every  char<,'e 
and  dominion  over  temporal  affairs."  And  is  this,  the  reader 
may  ask  in  astonishment,  the  pro})Osition — the  justly  condemned 
proposition — from  which  Mr.  Pixley  has  manufactured  his  own  ? 
I  answer  emphatically — yes!  and  I  challenge  and  dare  that  gen- 
tleman to  deny  it.  It  won't  pay,  then,  even  Mr.  Pixley  to  mis- 
represent matters  in  this  fashion,  for,  though  his  readers  may  be 
unfriendly  to  the  Catholic  Church,  they  still  do  not  like  to  be 
cajoled  and  duped  by  a  man  who  is  merely  after  their  dimes. 
In  short,  all  sucb  attempt,  or  what  I  might  call  litei-ary  jugglery, 
is  certain,  sooner  or  later,  to  recoil  on  the  individual  him.self, 
and  to  bring  him  into  the  most  serious  disrepute,  even  with  his 
quondam  admirers;  for  so  surely-  as  a  "  murder  will  out,"  so 
surely  will  falsehood  and  misrepresentation.  One's  own  chickens 
are  ever  sure  to  come  back  to  roo.st  in  their  own  nest. 

I  will  quote  only  a  couple  more  of  Mr.  Pixley's  encyclical 
propositions,  for  this  letter  is  already  too  long. 

' '  The  Romish  Church  has  the  right  to  exercise  its  authority 
without  having  any  limit  set  to  it  by  the  civil  power." 

The  erroneous  proposition  in  the  syllabus  is  this:  "The 
Church  is  not  a  true  and  perfect  society,  *  *  *  and  it  ap- 
pertains to  the  civil  power  to  define  what  are  the  rights  of  the 
Church,"  etc. 

Then  the  twenty-sixth  proposition,  as  stated  by  the  Argonaut, 
is:  "  The  Romish  Church  has  an  innate  and  legitimate  right  to 
acquire,  hold  and  use  in-operty  wiOiout  limit."  In  the  syllabus, 
the  error  runs  thus:  "  The  Church  has  no  innate  and  legitimate 
right  of  acquiring  and  possessing  property."' 

With  these  instances  I  think  I  have  shown  sufficiently  clear 
that  Mr.  Pixley's  mind  is  not  all  right  when  treating  of  matters 
appertaining  to  the  Church  of  Rome.  For  if  it  were,  no  matter 
how  desirous  he  may  be,  the  very  fear  of  being  detected  would 
prevent  him  from  making  such  flagrantly  erroneous  statements. 
He  is,  then,  the  more  to  be  commiserated  than  censured,  for 
what  a  man  cannot  help  doing  he  cannot  be  blanked  for  doing. 
His  hostility  to  the  Church  is  simply  a  malady;  it  is  a  weakness, 
an  infirmity  over  which  he  has  no  control,  but,  unlike  others  of 
his  class,  he  has  not  even  method  in  his  madness,  but  cuts  and 
slashes  on  all  sides — everlastingly  running  amuck. 

There  are  only  a  couple  of  other  matters  in  this  long  article 
that   I   can   spare  time  to  allude  to.     Amongst  other  things,  he 


[61] 

says  that  only  ignorant  persons  can  be  brought  to  submit  to  the 
Church  of  Kome.  So,  then,  the  greatest  philosopher  that  this 
country  has  yet  produced,  the  late  Orestes  A.  Brownson,  was  an 
ignorant  man;  and  so,  according  to  the  same  rule,  the  world- 
famed  Newman  is  an  ignorant  man,  and  Manning  and  Mivart 
and  a  host  of  others,  hardly  less  celebrated  in  the  world  of 
letters,  are  all — all  ignorant  men.  It  is  really  a  pity  that  some 
one  does  not  advise  Mr.  Pixley  not  to  be  cutting  such  a  ridicu- 
lous figure  by  making  such  absuixlly  ridiculous  statements,  for 
ttiey  are  only  calculated  to  excite  the  mirth  and  laughter  of 
friends  and  foes  at  his  expense. 

■  Nothing  I  have  ever  heard  has  reminded  me  so  strongly  of 
this  as  the  folly  of  the  frog  in  the  fable.  That  eccentric  and 
witty  court  jester  iEso^D  tells  us  that  an  ox,  feeding  one  day  in 
a  marshy  place,  happened  accidentally  to  set  his  foot  on  a  nest 
of  young  frogs,  crushing  nearly  all  the  brood  to  death.  One, 
however,  more  fortunate  than  the  others,  happened  luckily  to 
escape,  and  running  to  its  mother,  recounted  in  accents  of  trejii- 
dation  how  a  beast  of  enormous  proportions  had  well  nigh  anni- 
hilated the  whole  family.  '  How  big  was  the  beast?"'  inquired 
the  jjarent  frog:  "  was  it  as  big  as  this?  "  and  she  pufifed  herself 
out  to  an  enormous  extent.  "  Oh,"  said  the  youngster,  "a  great 
deal  bigger  than  that."  •'  Well,  was  it  so  big  ?  '  and  she  swelled 
herself  yet  more.  "Indeed,  mother,  it  was,  and  if  you  burst 
yourself  you  would  never  reach  its  size."  Chagrined  at  sucK 
disparagement,  the  old  frog  made  a  last  and  desperate  etibrt, 
and  surely  enough  burst  herself  in  twain.  Mr.  Pixley's  ignor- 
ance of  the  calibre  of  the  men  who  join  our  church  is  just  as 
pronounced  as  the  ignorance  of  that  frog  in'the  case  of  the  ox. 

I  would  recommend,  then — not  for  Mr.  Pixley's  serious  con- 
sideration, for  there  is  no  use  in  recommending  anything  for  the 
consideration  of  a  man  who  is  laboring  under  an  hallucination, 
but  for  the  consideration  of  those  who  may  be  liable  to  be  misled 
by  what  that  gentleman  writes — the  following  thoughtful  jjassage 
from  one  of  Macaulay's  able  writings:  "  "We  often  hoar  it  said 
that  the  world  is  becoming  more  and  more  enlightened,  and 
that  this  enlightenment  must  be  favorable  to  Protestantism  and 
unfavorable  to  Catholicism.  "We  wish  we  could  think  so.  But 
■we  see  great  reason  to  doubt  whether  this  is  a  well-founded  e.x- 
pectation.  We  see  that  during  the  last  250  years  the  human  mind 
has  been  in  the  highest  degree  active,  that  it  has  made  great  ad- 
vances in  every  branch  of  natural  philosophy,  that  it  has  pro- 
duced innumerable  inventions  tending  to  promote  the  con- 
veniences of  life.  *  *  Yet  we  see  that  during  these  250  years 
Protestantism  has  made  no  conquests  worth  speaking  of.  Nay, 
we  believe  that  as  far  as  there  has  been  change,  that  change  has, 
on  the  whole  been  in  favor  of  the  Church  of  Kome.  We  cannot, 
therefore,  feel  confident  that  the  progress  of  knowledge  will 
necessarily  be  fatal  to  a  system  which  has,  to  say  the  least  of  it, 
stood  its  ground  in  spite  of  the  immense  progress  made  by  the 
human  race  in  knowledge  since  the  days  of  Queen  Elizabeth. 


[02] 

111  fine,  All".  Pixley  speaks  of  the  intolerance  and  persecutinflf 

Kjiirit  of  the  (!atholic  Clmrch.  Tlii.s  is  a  lar^je  subject,  and 
would  obviously  take  mon?  time  than  I  could  now  devote  to  it, 
to  deal  with  it  proj)erly.  I  will  merely  remark  that,  as  far  as 
this  country  is  concerned,  whatever  intolerance  was  shown  and 
whatever  persecution  was  done  came  frcjm  the  j:»^entlemen  "  on 
the  other  side  of  the  house."  The  most  ridiculous  and  intoler- 
ant enactments  that  could  be  imagined  were  framed  by  the  an- 
cestors of  the  editor  of  the  Ar(/o7iau/..  It  was  even  made  a  pun- 
ishable offense  for  a  man  to  kiss  his  grandmother  on  the  Sunday* 
Here  is  a  specimen  of  the  laws  that  Mr.  Pixley's  progenitors 
made  in  this  land :  "No  woman  shall  kiss  her  child  on  the 
Sabbath  or  fasting  day."  I  wonder  what  would  Bob  lugersoll 
say  to  that?  Again:  "  If  any  man  shall  kiss  his  wife,  or  wife 
her  husband,  on  the  Lord's  day,  the  party  in  fault  shall  be 
punished,  at  the  discretion  of  the  Court  of  Magistrates."  I  am 
afraid  if  Mr.  Pixley  were  living  in  those  days  it  would  go  hard 
with  him,  for  I  believe  he  is  a  loving  and  amiable  husband. 
What  fun  men  would  poke  at  Leo  XIII  if  he  made  such  enact- 
ments as  these.  But  it  is  the  old,  old  story  over  again,  that  we 
can  see  motes  in  other  people's  eyes,  but  not  beams  in  our  own. 
Then  there  was  another  ridiculous  enactment,  said  to  have  been 
made,  but  I  have  never  been  able  to  hunt  it  up,  which  made  it  a 
criminal  offense  to  brew  beer  on  a  Saturday,  lest  it  should  icork 
on  a  Sunday?  In  fine,  I  would  ask  Mr.  Pixley  who  bored  the 
ears  of  the  Quakers  with  red-hot  irons?  "Who,  burned  the 
witches,  and  made  it  death  for  a  Catliolic  priest  to  be  caught  in 
certain  of  the  States?  But  there  is  no  need  of  going  into  detail 
on  this  matter. 

In  conclusion,  having  now  discharged  what  I  believed  to  be 
my  duty — that  is,  having  informed  the  community  of  the  state  of 
Mr.  Pixley's  mind,  or,  in  other  words,  the  deplorable  hallucina- 
tion under  which  he  is  laboring  in  regard  to  the  Catholic  Church 
— all  will  accordingly  henceforth  be  able  to  understand  the  value 
they  should  attribute  to  his  writings  when  he  speaks  on  Catholic 
matters.  And,  so  far  as  I  myself  am  concerned,  I  am  firmly  re- 
solved never  again  to  refer  to  the  editor  of  the  Argonaut,  no 
matter  what  he  may  say  against  the  religion  of  which  I  am  a 
member. 

W.  Gleesox. 


[03] 


A  Card  in  Reply  to  Mr.  Pixley. 


Editor  Post:  Iu  tbe  sense  that  "  one  canuot  touch  pitch 
"without  being  defiled,"  I  suppose  the  Rev.  Father  Gleeson  made 
a  mistake  in  accei^tiug  a  challenge  ' '  to  discuss  the  common 
school  question  iu  a  Jriendl;/  icay  "  with  a  person  so  truculent 
and  mendacious  as  Frank  Pixley  admittedly  is.  But  the  truth 
of  the  matter  is  this,  the  reverend  gentleman,  iu  the  simplicity 
of  his  heart,  never  for  a  moment  suspected,  until  too  late  to 
withdraw  from  the  contest,  the  utter  moral  depravity  of  his  an- 
tagonist. Those  who  read  Father  Gleeson's  last  letter  in  your 
paper  must  give  him  credit  for  extraordinary  forbearance  in  the 
face  of  so  violent  and  altogether  unprovoked  attack  upon  his 
Church;  and  yet  Pixley,  with  an  audacity  born  of  incredible 
wickedness,  accuses  Father  Gleeson  of  having  in  the  letter  re- 
ferred to  indulged  in  "  ribald  (!)  buflbonery,"  etc.,  and  even  of 
"  having  abandoned  the  discussion  of  the  original  question,  the 
character  of  our  common  schools!  " 

I  ask,  in  all  candor,  can  unblushing  mendacity  and  brazen 
effrontery  reach  lower  depths  of  degradation  ? 

Your  readers  know  who  abandoned  the  discussion  of  the 
"  original  C[uestion,"  and  the  most  critical  perusal  of  Father 
Gleeson's  letters  fails  to  reveal  the  slightest  departure  in  them, 
even  from  the  canons  of  correct  literary  taste  or  from  Christian 
charity.  To  be  sure,  the  subject  of  Pixley's  "hallucination" 
(an  essentially  charitable  hj'pothesis,)  was  handled  in  a  serio- 
comic vein,  simply  for  the  reason  that  it  would  have  been  mani- 
festly absurd  to  any  longer  treat  his  wild  and  untruthful  ravings 
in  a  serious  manner. 

If  Father  Gleeson's  Latin  quotations  are  not  literal,  and  if 
"  his  grammar  is  bad,"  it  certainly  devolves  upon  the  classic  (?) 
editor  of  the  Argonaut  to  give  examples  of  the  alleged  errors, 
for  surely  no  one  henceforth  will  be  simple  minded  enough  to 
accept  as  true,  without  corroborative  proof,  any  statement  from 
his  pen  on  this  or  any  other  subject.  The  fact  is  only  too  a]i- 
pareut  that  Pixley,  conscious  of  defeat,  and  writhing  under  the 
lash  so  cleverly  and  dextrously  applied  by  his  revereiul  oppo- 
nent, puts  aside  in  the  last  issue  of  his  paper  all  pretentions  to 
truth  and  decency,  and  in  his  blind  and  brutal  rage  has  earned 
for  himself  still  another  title  to  the  contempt  of  mankind. 

The  writer  of  this  letter  once  knew  Pixley  personally,  and  he 
has  now  the  privilege  of  being  on  terms  of  intimacy  with  Father 
Gleeson.  From  his  knowledge  of  both  he  can  say,  with  all  sin- 
cerity, that  he  cannot  conceive  two  men  so  antithetical;  the 
former  being — as  General  Barnes  once  wittily  and  a])tlysaid-- 
"  a  remarkable  example  of  arrested  development;  "  while  Fatlier 
Gleeson  illustrates  in  his  moral  and  mental  constitution  the  com- 


[04] 

pleteness  of  fully  developed  mftuhood — firm  as  adamant,  wliere 
principle  is  involved,  but  entirely  free  from  the  narrownesM  of 
sectarian  bigotry  or  prejudice — in  a  word:  Smts  pf.ur  el  muH  re- 
proche. 

As  this  communication  is  somewhat  personal,  you  have  per- 
mission to  reveal  my  proper  name  to  the  party  in  interest, 
in   case  he   asks  it. 

April  80,  '83.  Lex  Talionih. 


What  Mr.  Pixley  Thought  of  Common  Schools,  in  1881. 


[From  the  Argonaut,  June,  1881.] 

"  France  is  a  great  republic,  and  its  greatness — especially  fi'om 
"  a  financial  point  of  view — is  due  almost  eutireb'  to  its  splendid 
"educational  system."  This  profound  reflection  is  the 
iitterance  of  John  W.  Taylor,  Superintendent  of  Schools 
for  the  City  and  County  of  San  Francisco.  If  there  is 
any  nation  in  the  world  whose  system  of  education  is  unlike 
ours,  it  is  France.  The  French  system  is  radically  and  totally 
different,  having  no  element  corresponding  to  the  American 
free-school  system  in  a  single  particular.  In  France,  education 
has — except  with  brief  j^eriods  of  interruption — been  controlled 
by  the  Roman  Catholic  Church.  Priests  and  nuns  have  been 
charged  with  the  education  of  the  children  of  France  for  almost 
the  entire  period  of  its  history.  The  peasantry,  in  all  matters 
except  in  the  geography,  history,  and  glory  ol  France,  are  the 
most  imperfectly  educated  of  any  people  of  advanced  civilization 
in  Europe.  The  ordinary  school-book  used  throughout  the  rural 
district  is  a  Avonderful  thing.  It  is  more  than  curious.  Mar- 
velous stories  of  the  grandeur  of  France;  of  the  splendor  of  its 
places;  the  valor  of  its  kings;  the  bravery  of  its  warriors;  its 
grand  historic  achievements;  the  piety  of  its  early  saints — Saint 
Louis  and  other  saintly  kings;  its  conquests  and  triumphs  in 
arms  through  an  undimmed  and  glorious  historic  past;  its 
strength;  its  wealth;  its  piety  as  a  nation — all  these  are  mixed 
up  in  its  primary  school-book  with  aves  and  pater  nosters;  with 
miracles  and  miraculous  narratives.  Popes  of  Eome,  and  Kings 
of  France  and  warriors  and  saints  are  mixed  in  inextricable  con- 
fusion. The  peasant  child,  when  taken  away  at  an  early  age 
from  school,  carries  with  him  and  into  his  unambitious,  toiling, 
frugal,  peasant  life  a  very  limited  knowledge  of  history  or  geog- 
raphy, or  any  of  the  branches  of  learning  that  are  of  practical 
use  to  him  in  any  other  avocation  of  life  than  that  of  an  agri- 
cultural laborer.  He  is  thoroughly  ii::bued  with  the  simple  and 
mild  superstitions  of  the  Church  of  Rome;  with  all  his  suul  he 


[65] 

venerates  the  Pope;  he  confides  in  his  priest.  In  a  word,  he  is 
a  good  Catholic.  He  is  a  confiding,  superstitious,  ignorant,  un- 
ambitious, patriotic  Frenchman;  he  is  industrious  and  with  sim- 
ple habits;  he  toils,  and  is  economical;  he  is  patient,  and  accu- 
mulates; he  provides  a  dot  for  his  daughter's  marriage  portion; 
he  eats  hard  bread  and  an  onion  for  his  dinner,  and  drinks  thin 
claret;  he  is  sober,  saves  his  money,  and  loves* France.  When  a 
loan  is  called  for  by  the  government,  the  aggregated  accumula- 
tions of  the  peasant  class  swell  to  millions.  When  soldiers  are 
required,  the  conscription  brings  to  the  battle  field,  or  to  the 
casernes  of  Paris,  the  material  for  a  splendid  army.  We  are  not 
saying  that  the  kind  of  teaching  which  produces  simple-minded, 
honest,  economical,  industrious,  patriotic  men  and  virtuous 
working-women  has  not  its  advantages.  We  are  not  attempting 
in  this  article  to  sound  the  praises  of  that  system  of  common 
schools  which  in  Boston  and  San  Francisco  is  turning  out  some 
scholars  that  are  7iot  simple-minded  and  who  will  not  work,  and 
are  ambitious  only  to  spar  for  office;  that  are  made  to  feel  that 
their  education  places  them  upon  a  social  plane  above  their 
parents,  and  elevates  them  above  the  hereditary  hod  and  wash- 
tub.  There  are  compensations  in  a  system  of  education  that 
does  not  inoculate  all  its  pupils  with  an  ambition  to  go  to  Con- 
gress. If  Mr.  Taylor  had  said  that  the  greatness  of  France,  its 
financial  and  military  strength,  was  largely  dvie  to  the  lack  of 
education  among  the  peasant  classes,  he  would  have  come  nearer 
the  truth  than  he  did.  Mr.  Taylor  was  endeavoring  to  break  the 
force  of  the  remarks  of  the  editor  of  this  paper,  who  on  the 
previous  day  had  said  to  the  Board  of  Supervisors  that  the  com- 
mon schools  were  an  insupportable  burden  to  the  tax-payers  of 
San  Francisco;  that  the  expenditure  for  their  maintenance  was 
inexcusably  extravagant;  that  the  cosmopolitan  school  was  a 
crime;  the  high-schools  an  imposition,  and  in  fraud  of  the  legal 
rights  of  citizens;  that  the  establishment  of  normal  schools,  to 
give  teachers  a  free  education,  was  robbery;  that  the  special  in- 
struction given  in  languages  and  accomplishments  was  open  and 
inexcusable  extortion;  that  the  high  salaries  of  teachers  was  out 
of  proportion  to  what  equal  learning  and  equal  service  can  earn 
in  the  journalistic  or  other  professions,  or  in  business  occupa- 
tions, when  it  was  considered  that  during  they  year  the  give  only 
nine  months'  service,  only  five  days  of  labor  during  the  week, 
and  less  than  eight  hours'  service  per  day.  To  educate,  at  the 
expense  of  the  community,  the  child  of  any  person  able  to  pro- 
vide that  education,  is  an  imposition.  It  is  practical  communism. 
It  is  stealing  under  the  guise  of  law.  The  community 
is  under  no  higher  obligation  to  educate  the  wealthy  class  than 
to  feed  or  clothe  them.  To  educate,  at  the  expense  of  the  com- 
munity, the  child  of  any  poor  person  beyond  the  rudiments  of  an 
English  education,  is  as  much  of  an  imposition  as  it  would  be  to 
be  compelled  to  provide  that  child  with  fashionable  clothing  and 
luxurious  food.     To  impose  a  tax  upon  an  American-born  citizen 


[66] 

to  raaintaiu  Hchoola  wbore  the  cliildrGu  ot'  German  anrl  French 
residents  may  l)o  taught  French  and  German,  is  robbery  with 
insult  added.  No  honest  man,  native  or  foreign-born,  would 
accept  such  extorted  alma;  and  no  honf^st  law-maker,  or  super- 
visor, or  school-director,  who  did  not,  away  'lown  in  his  cow- 
ardly and  demagogical  nature,  fear  the  foreign  vote,  would 
countenance  or  upliold  such  unblushing  public  extortion.  The 
rich  or  poor  man  who  will  allow  his  children  to  be  instructed  in 
the  higher  mathematics,  or  in  the  higher  or  ornamental  branches 
of  classical  learning,  or  in  modern  languages,  at  the  expense  of 
his  fellow-citizens,  is  guilty  of  an  act  of  gross  and  palpable  in- 
justice, for  which  the  poor  man  ought  to  be  ashamed,  and  the 
rich  man  ought  to  be  punished.  There  is  not  half  so  good  a 
reason  for  educating  teachers  at  the  public  expense  as  could 
be  given  for  educating  physicians,  journalists,  or  horse-doctors. 
Those  who  are  thus  educated,  without  the  intention  of  teaching 
for  a  profession,  are  dishonest.  There  is  in  all  this  common- 
school  business  an  amount  of  humbuggery,  sentimentality,  pre- 
tense, and  sham  that  exists  in  no  other  institution.  It  is  nin  by 
narrow-brained  pedagogues,  and  selfish,  unprincipled  dema- 
gogues. It  is  endured  by  a  patient,  tax-paying  community,  be- 
cause public  opinion  has  not  j«t  subjected  the  system  to  any 
thoughtful  and  earnest  consideration. 


UNIVERSITY  Oi  v./vjui'ORNJAi. 

AT 

LOS  ANGELES 

UBRART 


UCLA-Voung  Research   Ubrarv 

LC621    .G47C  is  bo 


L  009  528  871    8 


RETURNED  TO  UCSB     I.L.L. 
JUM    »  1313 


UC  SOUTHERN  REGIONAL  ^-'^'^'^''^  J,f,{i,\||m,| 

AA    001  280  867    1 


1  10)n-8,'32 


DEMCO 
LIBRARY  SUPPLIES 

114  South  Carroll  Street 
Madison.  Wisconsin     ^ 


